The main takeaway from that two-day-old Wall Street Journal piece about the making of Solo: A Star Wars Story (Disney, 5.25) is that the Ron Howard-directed footage amounts to 70% of the final film.

Principal photography under original directors Chris Lord and Phil Miller began on or about 1.30.17, but it took Solo producer Kathy Kennedy and co-screenwriter and consigliere Lawrence Kasdan four and a half months to decide that they didn’t agree with L&M’s semi-comic approach (they were apparently going for something akin to Guardians of the Galaxy)? At the time of their dismissal Lord and Miller had nearly completed principal photography.

Kennedy wanted Howard to steer the project back to “the spirit of the original trilogy.” Howard began re-shooting in June 2017, and “had to direct almost the entire movie from scratch,” according to an 5.10 Indiewire summary of the WSJ article.

Posted 11 months ago, or on 6.21.17: “Why did producer Kathy Kennedy wait four and a half months to cut Lord and Miller loose? What does it say about Kennedy’s hiring instincts that she chose a couple of guys with whom she so disagreed that ‘she didn’t even like the way they folded their socks,’ according to Brent Lang‘s Variety story? “Kennedy, no doubt looking to shoot and construct the film along familiar lines, said in a recent statement that ‘it’s become clear that we had different creative visions on this film, and we’ve decided to part ways.’

“This conflict wasn’t apparent to Kennedy after three or four weeks of principal photography? Or after several weeks of it? I don’t know the minute-by-minute backstory but what kind of producer needs four and a half months to assess a flawed situation and then finally do something about it with filming all but completed?”