Kathleen Kennedy shares insights on Star Wars recasting

LUCASFILM president Kathleen Kennedy surprised Star Wars fans recently by admitting that 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story made the company rethink the practice of recasting the franchise’s most iconic characters.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Kennedy admitted that the prequel underperformed because of it.

As Kennedy noted it at different points in the interview, saying “We can’t do something with Luke Skywalker that isn’t Mark Hamill”, in relation to Alden Ehrenreich’s casting as a younger Han Solo.

Solo was the lowest-grossing Star Wars movie of all time upon its release.

Two of the franchise’s most popular characters, however, are a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), who clash once again this weekend in the eagerly anticipated Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi.

In another interview at Star Wars Celebration, Kennedy elaborated on her thoughts regarding recasting.

“We have so many different great stories we can tell, and new characters we can create and expand upon the mythology that [George Lucas] created,” she said.

“I think just deciding that we’re gonna start cherry-picking legacy characters and recasting and doing stories around them, I just don’t think we need to do that right now.”

Another beloved character — and one of the brightest spots to the otherwise divisive Solo — was young Lando Calrissian, played by Donald Glover.

A Lando “event series” that is to be developed by Justin Simien (Dear White People) was announced in December 2020, but updates about the spinoff have been few and far between.

It was also not mentioned in Thursday’s Lucasfilm presentation, which focused on Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, The Mandalorian, Ahsoka and Skeleton Wars.

“The only updates are that Donald Glover and all of us keep having conversations. He’s a popular guy, and he’s a very busy,” Kennedy says about the Atlanta creator and star.

In a segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Glover didn’t deny his involvement when asked, responding with a vague: “Am I? Just telling all my business”.