Donald Glover Is Officially The New Lando In Upcoming Han Solo Film

Beloved actor and musician Donald Glover — Community star, Atlanta mastermind, Childish frickin' Gambino — will follow in the very large footsteps of Billy Dee Williams by giving life to the galaxy's favourite card-playin', gamblin', misunderstood scoundrel himself, Lando Calrissian, in the upcoming standalone Han Solo Star Wars film.

Announced by production company Lucasfilm today, the award-winning writer and Grammy-nominated muso will bring his distinct charms to the high-swagger role of Lando, who first appeared in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back and became a key member of the Rebel efforts against the Empire for the remainder of the original Star Wars trilogy.

Glover joins the film's previously announced Han Solo himself, Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!), aboard the as-yet-untitled origin tale, which will be directed by all-star duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, Jump Street revival) and "depict Lando in his formative years as a scoundrel on the rise in the galaxy's underworld", according to a statement from Lucasfilm.

"We're so lucky to have an artist as talented as Donald join us," Lord and Miller effused. "These are big shoes to fill, and an even bigger cape, and this one fits him perfectly, which will save us money on alterations.

"Also, we'd like to publicly apologise to Donald for ruining Comic-Con for him forever."

Lando Calrissian is best-known to Star Wars fans as being totally unfairly pegged as a traitor and blamed for the debacle on Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, which, if you haven't seen it, we're not going to contextualise (c'mon, it's been over three decades).

Seriously, there have been novels' worth of screeds written about whether Lando is all cowardice and avarice or, in fact, the real MVP of the entire piece; just google "Lando Calrissian is a hero" to be greeted with page upon page of nerds gettin' into it at length.

Regardless of your personal feelings about his character, there's no denying he's smooth as velvet and as delicious as most types of cake (up yours, carrot cake) from the second he walks on screen; there's damn good reason Lando has remained a fan-favourite for the 30+ years since we were first properly introduced to him at the world's worst family dinner, and Glover is sure to be a more-than-worthy successor to Williams' seminal performance.

Glover has been bolstering his acting chops with a diversity of projects of late, including the acclaimed FX series Atlanta and appearing in sci-fi success The Martian, while an appearance in the impending Spider-Man: Homecoming is also on the cards.

The upcoming, untitled Han Solo movie is due to be released in 2018. It'll be preceded much sooner than that by the next chapter in the ever-expanding Star Wars saga, Rogue One, which is out in December.

If you need more help tiding yourself over, smash down this super-cut of every single one of Lando's lines and start fanning yourself frantically.