Star Wars has caught a bad case of reshoot-itis. Symptoms include blurred directorial vision, hair falling out and, in the case of the Han Solo movie, a sudden loss of money if insider reports are anything to go by. This wasn’t just a cut-and-paste job after Chris Lord and Phil Miller’s firings either – it’s essentially a completely different movie under the helm of new director Ron Howard.
Star Wars News Net’s Resistance Broadcast podcast (via Screen Rant) has spilled the beans on what’s been going on behind-the-scenes on the reshoots. Two quotes stick out. First, the movie is now “nearly all” from the reshoots. Lord and Miller’s cut has been confined to, probably, that great big ditch in the desert where they buried those god-awful E.T games in the ‘80s.
If that’s the case, then it makes sense that Michael K. Williams had to leave the movie due to scheduling conflicts and you’ve got to wonder just how close the movie ends up being to its original idea. No one wants a horrible mish-mash of a script that doesn’t mesh with a completely fresh vision.
More worryingly for Lucasfilm’s coffers, the reshoots also allegedly cost “twice the budget.” When you think about Star Wars: Rogue One only being salvaged from considerable reshoots, and ending up costing a total $200m overall, you’re bound to be looking at something north of that figure.
Could we be seeing our very first Star Wars flop in the making or can Ron Howard save the day? The director has been a great sport with teasing out several shots from the movie, but it could just be a case of distracting us from the great big worry that they’re throwing money down the Sarlaac pit. We’ll have to wait until 25 May, 2018 to find out.
Image: Lucasfilm
