These days, thanks to social media, and the sheer amount of content needed to drive sites like ours, the average fan knows much more about what happens behind-the-scenes than they ever did before. Decisions that used to just fly under the radar, or not be deemed newsworthy, are now painstakingly dissected. There was a time when a major production could simply cast actors, shoot, edit, promote, and release a movie and that would be enough. But nowadays there’s an insatiable demand to know about things like who’s rumored to be auditioning for a role, how a script is being reworked during a shoot, how the studio feels about the initial cuts of a film, and how said film is testing. 

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY is the latest production to come under scrutiny for something that’s either a routine day at the office…or the end of the world.  

The Page Six section of the New York Post, which specializes in gossip, is reporting that the Gareth Edwards-directed STAR WARS spinoff is in trouble because “Disney execs” are “in a panic” over the first cut of the film. In essence, the film has reportedly been ordered back for four weeks of reshoots, and their sources claim it’s because ROGUE ONE isn’t testing well.

“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,” says an unnamed Hollywood source. They also went on to say, “Gareth’s work on the first ‘Godzilla’ [which came out in 2014] shows he can handle a big studio blockbuster. But ‘Rogue One’ has fallen short of what J.J. Abrams did with ‘Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens.’ So Disney has ordered reshoots.“

The report also claims that Edwards likes to take risks, and so he’s tried to keep studio-involvement minimal, but that Disney and LucasFilm are putting their foot down. “Disney won’t take a back seat, and is demanding changes, as the movie isn’t testing well,” the source says.

Something that takes some of the sting off of this story is the following quote included at the end of it:

“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.”

When you put it in those terms, it makes it seem like the studio just wants to make sure that the film lives up to STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. That film just finished overtaking the world, earning stellar reviews, the adulation of fans, and a staggering $2,066,941,878 worldwide, so the studio just wants to make sure they’re putting their absolute best foot forward as a high-scale misfire could tarnish the good work FORCE AWAKENS did in salvaging the franchise from the stench the Prequel Trilogy had left on it for most fans. 

While other sites covering this story would like to sensationalize it by claiming that the studio is unhappy with the dark, brutal nature of Darth Vader‘s sequences in the film, it should be noted that this exclusive report doesn’t actually claim that at all. It mentions that the film will feature a darker tone, Darth Vader, and a cameo by a young Han Solo, but doesn’t say anywhere that the studio is worried about any of that.

So hold your horses, folks. Just as everyone went nuts when reports of SUICIDE SQUAD‘s reshoots hit the net, the sky might not be falling. Reshoots, pick-ups, and tweaks of a particular act in a tentpole film are all par for the course. Until we hear something more concrete, there’s not much to see here.

But if you’re a conspiracy theorist, and would like to sound off about this in the Comments below about some sort of correlation between this story and Edwards walking away from GODZILLA 2 to go work on “smaller films” after ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY, then have at it. I’d love to see what you think.

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SOURCE: Page Six