The Director Behind Rogue One’s Reshoots Breaks Silence

“I have to be careful. I don’t know what the statute of limitations is. I’ve never done an interview about Rogue [One], ever.”

That’s Tony Gilroy there, addressing his sizeable contribution to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story for the very first time. History tells us that Gilroy is merely credited with co-writing the biggest movie of 2016, but the truth is Lucasfilm called on the seasoned screenwriter to shoot some additional scenes involving the film’s finale – scenes that would later bag Gilroy a hefty $5 million paycheck for his efforts.

Those extensive reshoots quickly became a hot-button topic among the Star Wars community, who feared that director Gareth Edwards had lost control of the franchise’s first Anthology film. It’s a credit to Gilroy, then, that Rogue One emerged relatively unscathed – hell, one could argue that it’s a bona fide gem.

But after 16 months of silence, the writer-director touched on his increased workload while appearing on The Moment with Brian Koppelman podcast (h/t The Hollywood Reporter), where he finally offered up a few details about what went down:

If you look at Rogue, all the difficulty with Rogue, all the confusion of it… and all the mess, and in the end when you get in there, it’s actually very, very simple to solve. Because you sort of go, ‘This is a movie where, folks, just look…everyone is going to die.’ So it’s a movie about sacrifice.

How did he achieve such a feat? Simple, Tony Gilroy isn’t particularly fond of the Star Wars series, meaning he was able to come in and rework Rogue One‘s third act without bowing to fan service.

Gilroy continued:

That was my superpower. I’ve never been interested in Star Wars, ever. So I had no reverence for it whatsoever. I was unafraid about that… It doesn’t appeal to me. But I don’t think Rogue really is a Star Wars movie in many ways. To me, it’s a Battle of Britain movie.

And just like Rogue One before it, Solo: A Star Wars Story encountered some problems of its own during the course of production, when Ron Howard came aboard in place of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who parted ways with Lucasfilm over creative differences. Look for the finished piece to hit theaters on May 25th.