Phil Lord And Chris Miller 'Learned A Lot' Working On Solo: A Star Wars Story

The original directors of the Han Solo solo movie Solo: A Star Wars Story have spoken out publicly about their ouster from the high-profile Star Wars spinoff for the first time since they left the project five months ago. From the sound of things, they've gotten over it.

Lord and Miller were removed from the project in June, after a significant amount of their version of the movie had already been filmed. The reason for their removal was reported to have to do with competing visions for the movie between the directors and Disney. They were replaced on the project by Ron Howard, with the do-over in production resulting in Michael K. Williams being cut from the movie due to a lack of availability for reshoots. (Williams was replaced in the film by Paul Bettany.)

The duo spoke publicly on the split for the first time at a panel for their animated series Clone High, which took place at the Vulture Festival in Los Angeles over the weekend. Their comments from the panel were recorded and related by Vulture.

"The experience of shooting the movie was wonderful," said Lord, who also complimented the cast and crew he and Miller worked with as being top-notch talent. 

Usually, the term "creative differences" is taken to be a euphemism when a party is fired from a creative project. But the Solo split, according to Lord, had everything to do with real, insurmountable creative differences between his side and Disney's regarding the best way to go about handling the material.

"I think in terms of us leaving the project, I think everybody went in with really good intentions," Lord continued. "Our approach to making the movie was different than theirs. That was a really big gap to bridge, and it proved to be too big." 

Lord did not pretend there wasn't a sense of disappointment involved with leaving the project after so much time and effort invested into it. "Sometimes people break up, and it's really sad, and it's really disappointing, but it happens," Lord said. "We learned a lot from our collaborators, and we're better filmmakers for it." 

Miller, his filmmaking partner, got a little more sarcastic with his remarks, saying he and Lord are now "super well-adjusted, obviously we're doing great. We're super drunk right now."

Kidding aside, Miller went on to say he hopes the best for Ron Howard's version of the movie, and also shed light on what he and Lord have been up to with the unexpected opening in their schedule. After the duo "took a much-needed vacation", they got back into the mix by working on writing a sequel to The Lego Movie, and producing an animated Spider-Man feature centering on the character Miles Morales.

Overall, their comments came across as honest and candid, betraying a little bit of hurt, but presumably not enough anger to preclude them from getting more work in the future.

Amusingly, Bill Lawrence, the man behind the shows Scrubs and Cougar Town who was also seated on the panel as a Clone High co-creator, had no such qualms about decorum in his comments at the event. Instead of allying with Disney, Lawrence chose to defend his friends, relaying the joking comment, "I hope that movie s**** the bed."

Solo: A Star Wars Story will be out in theaters on May 25, 2018. Its release is being preceded in the franchise by the mainline series entry Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which will be out on December 15.