Rumor: Disney Is Worried About Rogue One, Reshoots Start This Summer

With reshoots starting this summer, rumors are swirling that Disney is worried about Rogue One.

Reshoots for the first Star Wars spinoff movie to come out of the collaboration between Disney and Lucasfilm will begin this summer, but rumors are swirling that the reshoots are not happening for the best of reasons. According to Page 6’s source, claims Rogue One has “fallen short” of the high bar J.J. Abrams set with The Force Awakens, and Disney “is demanding changes.”

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Before we all freak out, let’s put this news into the proper perspective. Page 6 is a tabloid, and tabloids tend to exaggerate everything, which is what seems to be happening here. The fact is reshoots happen all the time in filmmaking. Sometimes, after the director watches what has been filmed on their film’s official shoot, he or she discovers a camera angle was off, or a scene wasn’t played out quite right, or more sequences are needed to fill a gap in the flow of the story. The fact Disney wasn’t happy with the first cut is understandable because the first cut, like the first draft of a story or an essay, has problems that necessitate reshoots to be fixed. It’s also important to note the source doesn’t say what Gareth Edwards, the director of Rogue One, and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy thought of the first cut. In all likelihood, they weren’t happy with it, either.

There is also the question of who Page 6’s source is referring to when they say “Disney bosses.” The only person in Disney directly involved with Lucasfilm’s creative decisions, as far as we know, is Disney’s CEO Bob Iger. With giants like Kathleen Kennedy at the helm of LFL, and a Story Group handling everything on the canon side, why would anyone from Disney except Iger be brought in for their opinion on Rogue One? I could see Disney’s marketing department being brought in to see a cut of the film, but I have a hard time believing they would see any potential issues with marketing anything even remotely associated with Star Wars, much less another film.

Furthermore, a quote from a source at Disney allays any fears one might have about the state of Rogue One’s development.

"A Disney source added, “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.”"

There’s so much we don’t know, so much Page 6’s other source leaves out, it’s premature to take much stock in the claim that Disney is worried about Rogue One, particularly given that everybody involved with Rogue One has been prepared to do reshoots from the beginning of production. What Page 6’s article does tell us is that reshoots are definitely happening, and the first cut of the film was not perfect. Both of these are things we could have guessed.

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We will, however, keep following any news we find about the nature of Rogue One‘s reshoots. Hopefully an official announcement from Lucasfilm regarding those reshoots will break soon, and then perhaps we’ll know for sure the reasons behind them.