The questions pertaining to just how much of “Solo: A Star Wars Story” was original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller's footage before they were fired. How much of the material they shot, and there was plenty, was used in the movie before Ron Howard came to save the day? These are undoubtedly questions we will never know the exact answer to, but an estimate would be nice. “As Han says, ‘Don’t tell me the percentages.’ Never tell me the percentages,” Howard told EW.
However, Howard does mention that Lord and Miller's footage is very much part of the film:
“It’s disappointing that any company ever feels like they have to make a change like that,” he said. “It’s rough on everybody and disappointing for everybody, and I’ve just tried to come in and — of course, Phil and Chris’s fingerprints are all over the movie, given how much they put into it and the time they put into it. I hope fans won’t even think about how the movie was made. They should just lose themselves in it.”
“I don’t really want to explain it. I don’t really want to be specific about that because, again, I don’t even want that to matter to fans. I could understand why you’d ask, and some might even be curious, but look, everybody who has been involved in this has done nothing but love what this movie could be, and that’s been the vibe around it. I think audiences are gonna feel that love and excitement.”
Shooting a tentpole like "Star Wars" or any movie from the MCU comes with a blueprint of what you can and cannot do as a director, writer, cinematographer, it's just part of the game. In the same EW interview Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy chimed in by saying Lord and Miller were just going off-script, improvising if you will, something that just can't be done with these sort of films which are limited by their creative freedoms:
“I think these guys are hilarious, but they come from a background of animation and sketch comedy and when you are making these movies you can do that and there’s plenty of room for improvisation, we do that all the time, but it has to be inside of a highly structured process or you can’t get the work done and you can’t move the armies of people to anticipate and have things ready. So, it literally came down to process. Just getting it done,” she explained. “There comes a point where there’s only so much you can do and then you have to take a different course and that’s where we ended up. These are really great guys and you know, nobody wanted this to happen. It was just one of those unfortunate things. ”
As for George Lucas, this is a neat little story, he had his own imprint on the film, he and Howard go way back and did communicate throughout the shoot
“There’s even one little moment in a scene that — I can’t tell you what, sorry — but in the scene on the Millennium Falcon where George said, ‘Why doesn’t Han just do this,’ ” Kennedy shared. “It actually is a funny little bit that will probably get a laugh. And Ron happened to be by the monitor and not inside the Falcon and he goes, ‘Oh that’s a great idea,’ and ran in and said, ‘George wants us to do this.’ So that was pretty cool. I think George felt pretty great about that. He could revisit these characters, and I think he felt so comfortable, obviously with Ron being there, that it was just fun for him.”