Chris Weitz, Christopher McQuarrie, and a number of others all helped to re-write Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
It’s been common knowledge that Rogue One wasn’t written by a single person, that a number of scriptwriters had a go at the screenplay. But the extent of the re-writes and just how many people had a crack at Rogue One has now been revealed in full by Chris Weitz.
Speaking to the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via ComicBook.com), Weitz talked about how he, Mission: Impossible – Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie, and a number of others worked on the screenplay:
“Gary Whitta did the first draft and then I came in and did a couple of drafts and then after me came Tony Gilroy, Christopher McQuarrie, Scott Burns, I believe David Arndt had some notes on it, and then Tony Gilroy came back on again. And it’s astonishing to me that, for me, from my point of view, how well it turned out, given how many writers were working on it any one time.”
Weitz is certainly right to be surprised by how well Rogue One turned out considering all the writers involved, something which is often a bad sign in Hollywood. So for fans to have received a film of the calibre of Rogue One, is quite the miracle, and is surely a testament to Gareth Edwards’ direction.
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From Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars standalone films, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an all-new epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story sees Gareth Edwards (Monsters) directing a cast that includes Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Diego Luna (Milk), Ben Mendelsohn (The Dark Knight Rises), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Alan Tudyk (Con Man), Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler), Genevieve O’Reilly (Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith), Jimmy Smits (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), James Earl Jones (Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), Valene Kane (The Fall), Alistair Petrie (The Night Manager), Warwick Davis (Star Wars: Episode IV – Return of the Jedi), Ian McElhinney (Game of Thrones) and Jonathan Aris (Sherlock).