A new report is stating that Disney’s first Star Wars spinoff film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, will be getting some extensive and expensive reshoots in July.
According to Page Six –
[W]e’re told bosses at Disney are not fully satisfied with the first cut from director Gareth Edwards.
One Hollywood source told us, “The execs at Disney are not happy with the movie, and ‘Rogue One’ will have to go back into four weeks of expensive reshoots in July.”
In the past, it would have been easy to dismiss a report from a tabloid gossip column like Page Six, but they did scoop the casting of Alden Ehrenreich as young Han Solo for the upcoming Star Wars spinoff movie, so they have the benefit of the doubt right now when it comes to news out of Lucasfilm/Disney.
Page Six notes that Edwards prefers to keep studio interference to a minimum but that their source states –
Disney won’t take a back seat, and is demanding changes, as the movie isn’t testing well.
Frustratingly, the report does not give a clear indication as to what the executives were dissatisfied with? Was it the tone of the film, which has been reported to be rather darker than the main Star Wars saga? Four weeks of filming could go a long way towards trying to fix that.
No one is talking officially, but Page Six quotes a Disney source, who appears to be different from the source quoted earlier, who tried to put a positive spin on things –
The filmmaking team and the studio always anticipated additional shooting and second unit work to make the film the absolute best it can be, and the actors were aware there would be additional shooting. Coming off ‘The Force Awakens,’ there’s an incredibly high bar for this movie and we have a responsibility to the franchise and to the fans to deliver the best possible movie we can.
Yes, reshoots are pretty common now for big projects like this. And yes, they do get reported on from time to time. And yes, there have been rumors that Ehrenreich could show up in this and that could certainly be handled in these reshoots, if they are indeed happening. But four weeks does strike me as a bit longer than usual time for such things.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will star Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Forest Whitaker, Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk, Mads Mikkelsen, Riz Ahmed, and Ben Mendelsohn and opens December 16.
