Star Wars fans had a lot of complaints about Solo: A Star Wars Story both before and after it came out, but something that seemed to be universally loved was the decision to cast the multi-talented Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, taking over the role of the rogue from the Original Trilogy’s Billy Dee Williams.
It turns out that getting the fan favorite part changed Glover’s life pretty much instantly, too, as folks on the street started wanting his autograph the very day that the news was announced. The actor explained the following on a feature on Solo‘s Blu-Ray release:
“The day it was announced I was Lando I was like ‘I’m going to go get a pizza and watch Empire Strikes Back’, right? So I go to the pizza shop, on the street already people are like ‘Lando, Lando’ I go into there, he’s like ‘slice for Lando?’ I was kinda freaked out. And then I had to get on a plane the next day, right? I’m in line and he’s like ‘I can get you through if you sign this Lando.'”
Though Glover was hoping to celebrate his casting with a movie and pizza, it turned out to be a lot more sociable than the day his co-star Alden Ehrenreich found out he’d been cast as Han Solo. Unable to tell anyone this life-changing news, Ehrenreich went for a day out at an amusement park by himself.
As Glover found, people were over the moon about the idea of him playing Lando, and that quickly grew into a lot of fans wishing that Lucasfilm had made a solo movie for his character instead of a prequel based around Han’s origins. Clearly realizing the public demand for it, there was talk that the studio was looking into the possibility of a Lando pic in the near future.
However, the disappointing box office return for Solo has left the fate of all future Star Wars spinoff movies in doubt, with it being said that there’ll be a slowdown in the production of new films following Episode IX. No one’s ruling out more from Glover as Lando, though, so he might get more free pizzas in a few years’ time.
