“Disney execs in a panic over upcoming ‘Star Wars’ film” screams Monday’s New York Post’s Page Six Memorial Day headline, and on Tuesday Deadline Hollywood confirmed reshoots for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” are in the works.
“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,” a “Hollywood source” tells Page Six. “‘Rogue One’ has fallen short of what J.J. Abrams did with ‘Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens.’ So Disney has ordered reshoots.”
Deadline’s subsequent story, though, points out that the biggest domestic grosser in history – J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” – also underwent reshoots prior to release.
The Deadline story also indicates the reshoots will not impact “Rogue One’s” Dec. 16 release date less than seven months hence.
The Page Six source says “the movie isn’t testing well” -- but the Deadline source says no test screenings were ever conducted and, according to Deadline, “rather a re-shoot decision was made after Disney suits and producers watched the initial cut of the highly anticipated first spinoff.”
Depicting what the rebel alliance was up to shortly before the events of 1977's "Star Wars," "Rogue One" was directed by Gareth Edwards (2014’s “Godzilla”) from a screenplay by Chris Weitz (“About A Boy,” “The Golden Compass,” “Cinderella”). It stars the scrumptulescent Felicity Jones ("The Theory of Everything"), Mads Mikkelsen ("Hannibal"), Alan Tudyk ("Serenity"), Donnie Yen ("Ip Man"), Ben Mendelsohn ("The Dark Knight Rises"), Forest Whitaker ("The Butler"), Diego Luna ("Y Tu Mama Tambien," "Casa di Mi Padre"), Jonathan Aris "The Martian") and maybe the voice of James Earl Jones.
Find the Page Six story here and the Deadline story here.
