Michael K. Williams Cut From ‘Han Solo’ Movie Due to Reshoot Conflicts

Another day, another casualty of the Han Solo great creative shake-up of 2017. After the film lost its original directors, we thought that things might stabilize quickly and we'd be done hearing about people exiting the project, but how wrong we were. Michael Kenneth Williams, best known for playing Omar Little on The Wire, has announced that his character has been cut from the film because he can't make it back to London for reshoots. 

Williams confirmed all of this in an interview with Deadline, saying that his current shooting schedule on another film has prevented him from returning to Pinewood Studios for Han Solo reshoots...

“I felt great about what I created with the directors that I worked with,” said Williams, who was cast in the Han Solo origin story by original helming duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who exited in June. “It is what it is.”

“When Ron Howard got hired to finish out the film, there were some reshoot issues that needed to be done in regards to my character, in order for it to match the new direction which the producers wanted Ron to carry the film in,” Williams told Deadline. “And that would have required me on a plane a month ago to London, to Pinewood, to do reshoots. But I’m here, on location in Africa. It’s scheduling. I’m not going to be back on the market until the end of November after [his SundanceTV series] Hap and Leonard, and for them to wait that long for me, that would have pushed back the release date, which I believe is in May 2018. They wanted me now; I couldn’t go. So they had to clip-clip-clip.”

While there has been no official word on what character Williams was playing in the film, it was said to be an original creation new to the Star Wars universe. Some sort of half man, half animal cgi-live action hybrid. It seems the character will be jettisoned from the film entirely now that Williams cannot return for reshoots, so his dialogue and importance to the plot will likely be divided up among existing characters. 

The one silver lining in all of this is that Williams left amicably and holds no grudge against the production or any of the creative team...

“I don’t think that me not being in the Star Wars family is final,” Williams said. “I left with a very good taste in my mouth about the whole family, and I hope that I left a good taste in their mouth. They’re a great group of people, the Lucas family.”

Williams is a terrific actor and I sincerely hopes he gets a chance to return to the galaxy far, far away at some point in the future.