The Biggest Mistakes The Star Wars Franchise Ever Made

Alongside the new sequel trilogy, Disney also released two standalone films designed to tell separate stories outside of the Skywalker Saga. One of these was 2018’s «Solo: A Star Wars Story» from director Ron Howard, which acts as an origin story for young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich), explaining how he met Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and became a smuggler. Featuring a cast made up of Donald Glover, Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge and focusing on one of the most popular characters in the franchise, this «Star Wars» film should have been a huge hit.

But when it hit cinemas, «Solo: A Star Wars Story» failed spectacularly. It grossed just $393 million against a budget of $275 million, making it a box office bomb despite relatively positive reviews. Some of this may be attributed to the behind-the-scenes production problems that eventually became bad enough to halt filming altogether. Reports suggested that original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were too experimental and relied far more on improvisation.

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy eventually fired the pair, bringing in Ron Howard to reshoot most of the footage and finish the project. This is just one example of a wider problem for Lucasfilm in terms of its issue with directors, with the studio clashing with and even replacing multiple creative teams during the sequel trilogy and its Disney+ successors.