Lando Calrissian Update Drops Bombshell About Donald Glover's Star Wars Return
Donald Glover is still slated to return as his younger version of Billy Dee Williams' iconic original "Star Wars" trilogy character in a Lando Calrissian project, but now it's most likely going to be a movie rather than a TV series.
This information comes courtesy of Stephen Glover, a former "Atlanta" producer and Donald Glover's brother, currently working on writing this upcoming Lando project. During an appearance on journalist Pablo Torre's brand new podcast "Pablo Torre Finds Out," Torre broached the subject of what he thought at the time was a TV show about Lando only for Stephen Glover to correct him and clarify that they're actually working on a movie. Torre subsequently shared a clip of this interaction to Twitter. "It's not even a show," Glover said. "The idea right now is to do a movie."
He then compared his degree of communication with higher-ups, presumably at Disney, to a game of telephone. Because of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, he explained, he's learning the latest about the Lando project secondhand for the time being, hence why he referred to its status as a movie with indirect language rather than making it out to be a sure thing. With that said, fans can now expect Donald Glover's "Star Wars" return to be in a movie rather than a TV series unless plans change again moving forward.
Work on a Lando project has been in progress for years now
News of a "Star Wars" project with Lando Calrissian as its main character dates back all the way to 2020, at which point the plan was for a Lando show to land on Disney+. Justin Simien, director of "Dear White People" and the recent "Haunted Mansion," was at its helm as showrunner. However, Simien discovered he was fired from the Lando show at the same time the general public did in an article about the project's status published in July of 2023.
That same article was the first to confirm that Donald and Stephen Glover were both attached to the Lando project, which was still at that time referred to as a Disney+ TV series. For what it's worth, Simien praised the Glover brothers after exposing the manner through which he learned of his firing.
Stephen Glover's "Pablo Torre Finds Out" episode premiered on September 14, so at some point between late July and mid-September, the project shifted from a TV show to a movie. This is ultimately unsurprising considering Disney head Bob Iger sharing in a Time interview that he's currently focused on producing quality over quantity, seeming to want to scale back the frequent TV series that currently define both the Marvel and "Star Wars" properties.