Many, and you can consider me in this camp, consider Rogue One to be the best modern Star Wars movie. This was director Gareth Edwards’ next huge film after Godzilla, and let’s just say the process did not go smoothly. It’s well-documented that future Andor filmmaker Tony Gilroy stepped in during multiple rounds of reshoots and rewrites to “save” the movie, and rumors are he basically took full control. But how much of that is true?
Edwards, whose new film The Creator opens this weekend, addressed the topic of Rogue One with Variety, and reading between the lines, it seems he did in fact lose significant control to Gilroy…
“The way you make a film is as important as its screenplay. I would take full control over the process and a mediocre screenplay over a really good screenplay and zero control over the process.”
A situation like that could make a filmmaker bitter about the studio process, but Edwards seems to have come out on the other side with a positive outlook.
“Look, the only thing I can say is I was incredibly lucky. I got to make a Star Wars film. I won the lottery, in that sense. The idea of someone as privileged as me in any way implying that it was anything other than the amazing experience that it was to some extent – like, I don’t have any empathy for that person, and I don’t want to be that person either.”
While he’s not saying it here, it’s safe to say that Edwards’ experience in the Lucasfilm system led to The Creator, a fully original sci-fi project that he directed and co-wrote with Rogue One writer Chris Weitz.