By Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --There's been a disturbance in the force and the young Han Solo film is suddenly without a director. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said Tuesday that the Star Wars spinoff is parting ways with directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller due to different creative visions on the film.
Kennedy said a new director would be announced soon.
Lord and Miller had been filming the untitled project in London since January 2017 with stars Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo and Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian. The supporting cast includes Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke and Thandie Newton.
"Unfortunately, our vision and process weren't aligned with our partners on this project. We normally aren't fans of the phrase 'creative differences' but for once this cliché is true," the directors said in a joint statement Tuesday. "We are really proud of the amazing and world-class work of our cast and crew."
Lord and Miller have developed a stellar reputation in Hollywood for their smart and profitable adaptations of creaky or impossible properties like "The Lego Movie" and "21 Jump Street" and its sequel. Anticipation was high for what they would do with the Han Solo film, which was written by Star Wars vet Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jon Kasdan.
Over the past six months the directors have been widely engaged on social media, drumming up interest in the project — the second Star Wars anthology film after "Rogue One." The anthology films are considered separate from the "main trilogy," which includes "The Force Awakens" and the upcoming "The Last Jedi."
Lucasfilm has had issues with directors before. In 2015 the company parted ways with director Josh Trank, who had been working on another Star Wars anthology film. They have yet to slate a replacement director.
The untitled Han Solo film is still slated for a May 2018 release.
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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