After taking over directing duties from Phil Lord and Chris Miller during filming, Ron Howard wanted to re-shoot Williams’ characters scenes to bring him more in line with his new vision for the movie.

Due to prior commitments, that Williams explains below, he was unable to commit to another month of shooting with Howard. Utimately, the decision was made to cut his character.

“When Ron Howard got hired to finish out the film, there were some re-shoot 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 said in an interview with 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.”

Williams is in Africa filming spy movie The Rea Sea Diving Resort with Ben Kingsley and Chris Evans. He's etched out a very respectable career (The Road, 12 Years A Slave) since bursting on to the scene as notorious drug dealer and armed robber Omar Little in The Wire.

Ron Howard has been trolling Star Wars by releasing behind-the-scenes teasers from the Han Solo set on his social media accounts.

The movie is due out in May, 2018.

Via: Deadline