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Rogue One gets reshoots, more Donnie Yen?

Rogue One

Star Wars: will be having some reshoots this summer – including more footage – but it’s currently difficult to separate fact from fiction over the reasons why and what they’ll involve…


Over the last few days there’s been much discussion about possible re-shoots of the upcoming Star Wars: Rogue One. Some reports suggested ‘concerns’ over the current state of the film directed by (who recently stepped down as the director of Godzilla 2, citing the desire to make smaller films). Apparent test-screenings, it was claimed, had gone badly. Other reports highlighted that some of the sequences involving Donne Yen coming back to film action scenes.

Industry site Deadline addressed some of the news and their studio sources said that there had yet to be any test-screenings, beyond those for senior executives, so that part of the story was incorrect. There were decisions being made about the balance of the piece and this is where some of the confusion comes in. One report suggests  that though the studio was ‘happy’ with the current version they still felt it could be made ‘great’ and there were concerns over a ‘lack of edge‘ that the studio considered had been better in The Force Awakens. However parallel reports somewhat fly in the face of that and suggest the existing cut was deemed too unrelentingly dark and what was required were some lighter moments. What is known is that Donnie Yen has confirmed he’d be heading back to over the summer to shoot more scenes – though, again, it’s not entirely clear if these are additional scenes or merely extra/tweaked  footage for what’s already been lensed.

Other rumours are suggesting that some extra scenes will be shot involving a cameo from a existing character – the popular money being on Darth Vader, given the film’s timeline placing it a short time before A New Hope, though there’s been suggestions of a scene as well. (The latter doesn’t make as much sense as newcomer Alden Ehrenreich appears to be playing a younger Solo in the announced prequel spin-off and would be too old, even with superior CGI abilities).

It should be noted that many films undergo reshoots on their way to the screen, usually when the filmed material doesn’t gell quite as well as the written-page script intended or new ideas are thrown in to the mix when a cut is assembled –  especially those projects with a lot of expectations and budget on their shoulders. Thus far the additional work doesn’t look to be extensive, lasting at most four weeks,nor has December’s release date been altered.

Here’s a reminder of what we’ve seen of the project so far…

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