From the Snyder Cut to the Ayer Cut we've seen a lot of Hollywood movies in recent years that have gone through a lot of changes between their original conception and the version that we got on screen. However, it's possible that no movie turned out quite as different as it could have been as Solo: A Star Wars Story. In that case, the original directors were never even able to finish principal photography. At this point we know very little about the movie Phil Lord and Christopher Miller could have made, but now, we have one interesting clue.
Following John Boyega's public speech at a Black Lives Matter protest, Polygon writer Robert Daniels published a piece focused on the lost opportunity of the new Star Wars trilogy to use themes of Black resistance as part of Finn's heroic arc in the films. In response to a Twitter post of the article, former Solo: A Star Wars Story director Phil Lord made an interesting comment.
While Phil Lord doesn't go into detail about what he means, it's not exactly difficult to connect the dots. Solo: A Star Wars Story had its own prominent Black character in Donald Glover's Lando Calrissian, and so it would appear that Lord is saying that, had we seen the version of Solo that he and Christopher Miller were working on get completed, we would have seen a version of Lando that perhaps did embrace these same thematic ideas.
While other directors who didn't get a chance to finish their movie their way, like Zack Snyder and David Ayer have, to some degree, spoken openly about the movie they would have made, we actually know next to nothing about the Star Wars movie that Lord and Miller left in the middle of filming. They've said very little about the film overall.
Reports indicated that the pair clashed with screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan, and that eventually Lucasfilm sided with Kasdan and the decision was made to let Lord and Miller go, but exactly what the clash was over specifically has never been made clear. It's unlikely that this potential difference with Lando is the only thing that would have been different in a Lord & Miller Solo, but if this was one of the differences, how that version of the character would have fit into the larger film might give some indication what the film as a whole could have been like.
Unfortunately, unlike Zack Snyder's Justice League, which is a thing that is happening, and a David Ayer cut of Suicide Squad, which is at least theoretically possible, we'll never get a Lord & Miller cut of Solo. The pair were let go in the middle of filming, and so there certainly isn't enough footage shot by the pair to make a finished film.
