Rogue One Reshoots Earned One Writer Over $5 Million

CBR

By Brett White

Published Nov 30, 2016

Bourne screenwriter Tony Gilroy was initially paid $200,000 a week for his work on the Star Wars anthology film.

As was revealed this past spring, "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" underwent a number of reshoots. Now it looks like those reshoots have delivered a healthy payday to one of the people involved. Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter behind the "Bourne" franchise, came on board to make rewrites and oversee the reshoots, and now sources indicate that when all is said and done, he will have made over $5 million for his work on "Rogue One."

As The Hollywood Reporter points out, Gilroy came onto the film in June and his time with the production lasted into the fall. He was initially paid $200,000 a week -- considered a normal wage for a respected writer working on a major studio film -- to write dialogue for the reshoots. As the reshoots continued and his work expanded to include post-production, his paycheck increased. One area that Gilroy is said to have worked on is the film's ending, which was apparently worked on in reshoots and postproduction. His postproduction work included overseeing the final edit of the film.

Gilroy was announced as working on "Rogue One" in August. It was reported at the time that director Gareth Edwards and Gilroy had a strong collaborative relationship. “There are not two separate editing rooms; they are all in there with their ideas,” said a source. “Tony’s a strong force, but they’re all working together.”

Following the initial rush of rumors regarding the reshoots in the spring, director Gareth Edwards spoke out about them. “I mean it was always part of the plan to do reshoots,” said Edwards in June. “We always knew we were coming back somewhere to do stuff. We just didn’t know what it would be until we started sculpting the film in the edit. There’s lots of little things that we have to get, but it’s all little things within the preexisting footage.”

Set outside of the main sequel trilogy that began with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Rogue One” is set just before 1977’s “Star Wars” and details the Rebel plot to steal the Death Star plans from the Empire. Directed by Gareth Edwards (“Godzilla,” “Monsters”) from a script by Gary Whitta and Chris Weitz, “Rogue One” stars Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Forest Whitaker, Diego Luna and Riz Ahmed.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” opens on December 16.