During a Disney Investor Day at the end of 2020, Lucasfilm revealed that Justin Simien would serve as showrunner on a Lando TV series starring Solo: A Star Wars Story's Donald Glover.
News on the project since then has been pretty much nonexistent, and Glover has frequently danced around the question of whether he's really set to reprise the role in subsequent interviews. As for Simien, he's recently been doing the rounds to promote Disney's Haunted Mansion movie.
Inevitably, he too has been asked about Lando lately, admitting that he's heard nothing about the series since it was announced. The studio reportedly told him they had to figure out everyone's availability but shortly after those comments started being covered by news sites, we learned Glover and his brother Stephen will instead be writing the show following Simien's exit.
The only issue is, it appears no one told the filmmaker he'd been fired.
As you can see (via SFFGazette.com), Simien learned of the change thanks to social media. While he was quick to share kind words for the Glover brothers, he's clearly disappointed, and this is an appalling way for Lucasfilm to have handled the situation.
We wouldn't be surprised if Donald and Stephen are no closer to getting Lando on our screens than Simien was. In fact, this may well have just been Lucasfilm's way of attempting to avoid some of the negative headlines the director's comments were generating.
Kathleen Kennedy's time as Lucasfilm President has been nothing if not rocky, particularly when it comes to maintaining relationships with filmmakers. This, unfortunately, is another example of that.
Check out Simien's Lando comments below.