Tony Gilroy's Big Paycheck For 'Rogue One' Reshoots Included Fixing The Ending

Over the summer, one of the big topics of conversation for Star Wars fans were the reshoots for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. An initial report indicated that Rogue One reshoots needed to be completed after Disney was unhappy with the first cut of the film, and a follow-up said that as much as 40% of the film was going to be completely redone. The urgent nature of the reshoots was debunked shortly thereafter, but it was a story that felt more like damage control by Lucasfilm than giving us the whole picture.

Now we seem to have some further indication that the extensive and expensive reshoots that were originally reported were just as drastic as originally thought. You might remember that Michael Clayton writer and director Tony Gilroy was brought in to help on the reshoots by writing some additional material (after working on the script the previous summer) and working as second unit director. But his role on the movie was reportedly far more involved, including fixing the ending of the movie.

Find out the new details on Rogue One reshoots after the jump.

The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Tony Gilroy is being paid $5 million for his work on Rogue One, which is more than many directors get paid for being at the helm of an entire production. Originally, Gilroy was pulling in $200,000 a week when he first started work on the Rogue One reshoots, a typical fee for the kind of work he was doing. But then the workload increased.

Supposedly, Gilroy began working on Rogue One in June, but a couple months later, he was a key player in post-production alongside director Gareth Edwards, and he continued to work on the movie into the fall. His work on the movie is said to have been rather extensive. Apparently he was involved with reshoots that fixed some of the initial problems with the movie, including the ending.

Hopefully all this extra work ends up being good for Rogue One. Reshoots on a blockbuster are common, even if they're not always this extensive. If what was originally shot wasn't working the first time around, then we can only hope that they were able to fix those issues and deliver a good Star Wars movie. I'm most curious as to what this says about the work of Gareth Edwards. Could he not handle this movie himself that he needed someone like Gilroy to step in? It's hard to say, but it's clear that whatever was planned in pre-production didn't turn out as they hoped during production.

Again, all we can do is hope that all these issues with the movie were fixed and we'll get a solid spin-off to begin this new kind of Star Wars movie. We'll find out when Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opens on December 16.