Donald Glover Has Turned 'Lando' From A Series Into A Movie

It's a bit of deja vu for someone who covered the same happening to 'Armor Wars' last September

The Glover brothers are altering the deal. Donald and Stephen’s Star Wars Lando Calrissian-centered project for Lucasfilm is no longer the Disney+ series it has spent most of its development as, but a theatrical film.

Stephen revealed the pivot while appearing on an episode of the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. He, a three-time Emmy nominee as an executive producer of Donald’s FX series Atlanta, told the sportswriter host “It’s not even a show. The idea right now is to do a movie… Right now because of the strike, it’s like [a game of] telephone.” The Glovers had taken over the project from Justin Simien, creator of Dear White People and director of Disney’s Haunted Mansion movie from earlier this summer.

Lando was initially announced as part of the slate announced Disney’s Investor Day in December 2020, as a prequel “event series” surrounding the con artist character originally played by Billy Dee Williams in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and returned to the role the previous year in The Rise of Skywalker. The latter was after a highly praised performance by Donald Glover in the prequel film Solo: A Star Wars Story, even in the face of box office disappointment.

For a time it became less clear how much of a prequel the series it would be but the Glovers’ takeover has everyone concluding they’re writing for themselves/Donald. This is the third high-profile project in a year to jump formats. Last September, it was reported that Armor Wars, which was another MCU Disney+ series announced during the same Investor Day presentation as Lando, was being redeveloped as a movie. Starring Don Cheadle as James “Rhodey” Rhodes, it had retained its writer Yassir Lester. Even before Disney chose to delay its films and Marvel TV series than face the unions striking against them, no release date for the film has ever been announced, let alone to dislodge from it in a shuffle.

In addition, Paramount+ long had a Star Trek series in development spinning off Michelle Yeoh’s Emperor Georgiou as she joins a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the Federation as she faces her tyrannical past. In April, after Yeoh’s Oscar she had the leverage to greenlight it but not the schedule to commit it to a series. Therefore, known as Star Trek: Section 31, it became a movie as well.

Source: TVLine