David Fincher is still main choice to direct "World War Z 2"

The headline over at Collider tells us that "World War Z 2" producer David Ellison REALLY wants David Fincher to helm the project, so much so that he is publicly stating  “There’s a script that we’re incredibly happy with, and it’s just getting a couple of key deals closed… We hope [Fincher] makes the movie.”

Ok fine, I get it, get all the nooks and crannies dealt with, make sure Fincher gets total creative control, and then get this ball rolling. This would be Fincher's first all-out blockbuster, although you could make a case for "Alien 3" as well, I guess. Fincher hasn't directed a film since 2014's "Gone Girl." At some point he was supposed to direct Ben Affleck in remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on A Train," which would have taken place in a plane, but IMDB doesn't have that project listed anymore. Scrapped? Who knows. Fincher would be collaborating with Brad Pitt for the fourth time if "World War Z 2" gets made.

"The slap heard round the world"

This scene is nicknamed "The slap heard round the world" - From "In the Heat of the Night" (1967) with Sidney Poitier as a Philly detective investigating a murder in the deep South, which played in theaters at the height of racial tensions & civil rights protests

Here's a more detailed take:

"The film contains a famous scene in which Tibbs and Gillespie visit the home of Eric Endicott to question him, following Tibbs' discovery of trace evidence in the murder victim's car (a piece of osmunda). Upon discovering that Tibbs is suggesting he murdered Colbert, Endicott slaps Tibbs. Tibbs slaps him back. Reportedly, Tibbs's action was originally omitted from the screenplay, which stayed true to the novel with Tibbs not reacting to the slap. However, when Poitier read the script, he was purportedly uncomfortable with that reaction, as it was not true to the values his parents instilled in him. He requested that the producers alter the scene to Tibbs slapping Endicott back. This was important because of the ongoing battle for civil rights, which was still raging in 1967, despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was one of the first times in any major motion picture when a black man reacted to provocation from a white man in such a way."

"Referring to the scene Poitier said, "[The scene] was almost not there. I said, 'I'll tell you what, I'll make this movie for you if you give me your absolute guarantee when he slaps me I slap him right back and you guarantee that it will play in every version of this movie.' I try not to do things that are against nature." However, Poitier's version of the story is contradicted by Mark Harris in his book, Pictures at a Revolution. Harris states that copies of the original draft of the screenplay that he obtained clearly contain the scene as filmed, which is backed up by Jewison and Silliphant."

[Wikipedia]

Woody Harrelson says he hasn't smoked pot for over a year now

Woody Harrelson, who has been an outspoken supporter of Marijuana legalization for decades now, says it's been more than a year since he quit the herb. He's dry, sober, straight, clean, whatever you call it. Say it ain't so Woody? I can't say I have done it as much as he has, I can only image the amounts he has smoked on a daily basis over the years, but I do admit that I do take a few tokes here and there. Nothing wrong with that. I just wouldn't let it invade my life, that's when it gets to be a problem. I can't agree with the notion of wake and bakes, the act of smoking in the morning, that is just something that spells trouble. However, being sober from alcohol for over a year now, not that I had any sort of problem with Grandpa's old cough medicine, I find that pot usage has had many more benefits in my life than taking a drink or two, which can really mess you up mentally in the long run, it is a depressive after all. 

The Woodman has this to say:

“[It was] just 30 solid years of just partying too f—ing hard,” Harrelson continued. “I don’t have a problem at all with smoking. I think it’s great. I think it’s a great drug, in terms of… Even cops say that the side effect is euphoria. Or the … what do you call it?… The effect of it is euphoria. But when you’re doing it all the time, it just becomes… Well, you know. I feel like it was keeping me from being emotionally available.”

“Last night, someone had not just good herb, but sativa — really good sativa,” Harrelson explained. “There’s a joint, and beautifully rolled. I like a beautifully rolled… and I just was like, I mean, I’ve gone this long. It would be weird to just be like, ‘Okay, let me have a hit off that,’ and then suddenly go back to smoking too much.”

"Partying too fucking hard" ??? Really ???? I'm sure the "partying too fucking hard" part wasn't just with pot. Is there such a thing as partying too hard solely on pot ???? Somebody enlighten me on this. Oh, and Harrelson saying no to Sativa is like a Christian saying no to God's calling.

[EW]

It's Over: Arnold won't be back for more "Terminator" movies

At this point the Terminator franchise is all, but dead to me. When James Cameron left that was the beginning of the end. I tolerated the third film, "Rise of the Machines," but the subsequent sequels were atrocious. They took away all the humanity and artistry that made the originals so good. No Cameron, No Arnie, why even continue the damn franchise? Of course, because it can still be monetized and still sucker people into going to see it because of the title alone. 

“It is over for ‘The Terminator’ and Arnold,” a source told the New York Daily News.“The studio has taken the sequel off the production slate completely, meaning there is no preproduction or any plans for another sequel. The talent had been offered long term deals, but this is not happening The Genisys movie was seen as a way of reviving (the franchise), but the critics were not happy. and somehow the studio bosses fell out of love with making more, even though they made huge profits. It would need an independent production company to think about making this, and asking Arnie back at age 70 to play that again may be a tough ask” the source added.

[Yahoo]

Tom Cruise set to top every stunt he's ever attempted in MI:6 according to producer, been training for over a year to perform the stunt

Thanks to Frosty over at Collider for this little tidbit he got while interviewing MI:6 producer David Ellison at SXSW:

“We’re thrilled. Chris is back, obviously, writing and directing after Rogue Nation. We could not be more excited about the character Henry Cavill’s going to play. And I will say after the Burj [Khalifa] we thought it was going to be impossible to top that stunt, and then Tom did the A380 for the plane. What Tom is doing in this movie I believe will top anything that’s come before. It is absolutely unbelievable—he’s been training for a year. It is going to be, I believe, the most impressive and unbelievable thing that Tom Cruise has done in a movie, and he has been working on it since right after Rogue Nation came out. It’s gonna be mind-blowing.”

"It all comes from the best place. It is all about entertaining an audience. Tom’s entire mantra for hanging on the side of the Burj Khalifa or the A380 or literally holding your breath for six minutes underwater to do the Taurus sequence is, in a world of massive [visual] effects, he said the audience can tell when it’s you on a green screen or when you’re actually doing it live. And the tension, because the stunt is real, actually puts the audience where Ethan Hunt is where they are in the movie. He said that’s why he does it; it’s all about entertaining an audience and it makes the movie better.”

Scientology stuff aside, Cruise is a genuine actor that is serious about his craft. The plane stunt from MI:5 and the Burj Kalifa from MI:4 were both fantastic. I'm not sure how they're going to top "strapping the world's biggest movie star to an actual plane during take off," but, hell, I'm all eyes and ears for this next installment. 

Another Mission Impossibe stunt nobody seems to be talking about is when Tom Cruise Held His Breath For 6 and a Half Minutes. 

MI:6 is set for release on July 27, 2018.

I wrote earlier last week about Cruise's passion for stunts:

"If you saw Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in IMAX, for my money the best installment of the never ending franchise, this is the scene you will remember the most. The story goes Tom Cruise fired his own insurance company so he could perform this gravity-defying stunt atop Dubai's Burj Kalifa. In the scene, Cruise runs, slides, crawls and, yes, even flies around the tall skyscraper. That's 28,000 feet above the ground. The fact that Cruise looked so comfortable and at ease doing this stunt does show the high that results from performing such a risk-taking, death-defying endeavor.  I wholly recommend you check out the behind-the-scenes featurette of the stunt HERE."

"It also doesn't look it;s going to stop. This here is a picture of Cruise in a preparation meeting for The Mummy's zero-gravity plane scene. He looks like a a kid in the candy store, pumped for the stunt. Cruise does most of his own stunts. Having spoken to a few stuntmen, it's all about the rush. Once you start doing it, it's very hard to stop. Much props to him, I don't think anyone else in Hollywood goes to the extent that Cruise does in making his action scenes look as realistic as possible."

"Beauty and the Beast" hauls in seventh best opening of all-time at the weekend box-office

1. “Beauty And The Beast” — $170 million
2. “Kong: Skull Island” — $28.8 million ($110.1 mil.)
3. “Logan” — $17.5 million ($184 mil.)
4. “Get Out” — $13.2 million ($133.1 mil.)
5. “The Shack” — $6.1 million ($42.6 mil.)
6. “The Lego Batman Movie” — $4.7 million ($167.4 mil.)
7. “The Belko Experiment” — $4 million
8. “Hidden Figures” — $1.5 million ($165.5 mil.)
9. “John Wick: Chapter Two” — $1.2 million ($89.7 mil.)
10. “Before I Fall” — $1 million ($11.2 mil.)

1	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	2015	$247,966,675	$250,542,771
2	Jurassic World	2015	$208,806,270	$210,975,534
3	Marvel's The Avengers	2012	$207,438,708	$216,398,954
4	Avengers: Age of Ultron	2015	$191,271,109	$193,258,202
5	Captain America: Civil War	2016	$179,139,142	$179,139,142
6	Iron Man 3	2013	$174,144,585	$179,045,511
7	Beauty and the Beast	2017	$170,000,000	$170,000,000
8	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2	2011	$169,189,427	$180,126,673
9	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice	2016	$166,007,347	$166,007,347
10	The Dark Knight Rises	2012	$160,887,295	$167,836,768

[Box Office Mojo]

"The Quiet Man," A St. Paddy's classic, but, more importanty, a feminist classic!

I won't be the first and I won't be the last to post, on this St. Paddy's day weekend, about John Ford's "The Quiet Man," a film that on the surface looks as silly as any of the Irish stereotypes depicted in the film, but is actually deeper than most people give it credit for. If you look past the beautifully realized technicolor and silly plotting, you actually have a film that is a staple in feminist film studies. I kid you not. If you want to know how women in the movies has changed over the years, look no further than "The Quiet Man."

Ford's classic has ex-American Boxer Sean Thornton and O'Hara's Irish lass duking it out in a battle of the sexes for the ages. She holds her own and he holds his, but the battle at play is actually much more attuned to today's world than that of the '50s (the film was released in 1952). O'Hara's Colleen is a feisty woman who refuses to adhere to any of the matriarchal conventions of the time. Hell, she even punches and slaps John Wayne -- doesn't that tell you something?  

Most people of a certain age will remember O’Hara first and foremost from this movie, but what they seem to forget is that she played strong female characters in other films, such as "The Black Swan" and "Sinbad the Sailorhat." We usually connect Bette Davis to roles that defined feminism at the time, but O'Hara never got any love. This was probably due to the fact that her beauty always played a big part in her fame and the way she was perceived by the moviegoing public. I mean, yeah, she was stunningly beautiful, a knockout if you will, but she didn't resort to roles that would necessarily be deemed stereotypical for a woman back then. People were too transfixed with her looks to even notice just how fully fleshed out some of her roles really were. Look closer next time.

"Beauty and the Beast" Made $64 Million on Friday alone

Disney's marketing machine has succeeded again at breaking box-office records. Their live-action version of "Beauty and the Beast" made an astounding $64 million on Friday. It is headed towards a $170 million weekend.

If you didn't read my thoughts, here's an excerpt from my 2.5 star review posted a few weeks ago:

"I had somewhat strong hopes for Bill Condon's live-action adapation of "Beauty and the Beast," but those hopes were drowned somewhere near the start of this expansive, but middling film. The songs are, as always great, but, let's get real here folks, this is practically a shot for shot remake of the 1991 classic. Albeit with a few new tunes added into the second half, but this is a predictable yarn of a film that just doesn't give us anything new or fresh."

"It actually made me appreciate even moreso last year's much more succesful rehash of "The Jungle Book," no thanks to the visual prowess of its director Jon Favreau. Nostaligiasts will no doubt eat up Condon's film, but there's someting almost too cold and calculated about the whole proceedings. I will say that the film does pick up and try new things in its second half, which ends up being much more succesful than the first hour. Emma Watson is great, isn't she always, and the rest of the cast is delivers, especially Luke Evans as Gaston who brings out all the machismo related to the character in effective ways."

[Box Office Mojo]

Tom Cruise sitting on top of the Burj Khalifa, 2010

If you saw Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in IMAX, for my money the best installment of the never ending franchise, this is the scene you will remember the most. The story goes Tom Cruise fired his own insurance company so he could perform this gravity-defying stunt atop Dubai's Burj Kalifa. In the scene, Cruise runs, slides, crawls and, yes, even flies around the tall skyscraper. That's 28,000 feet above the ground. The fact that Cruise looked so comfortable and at ease doing this stunt does show the high that results from performing such a risk-taking, death-defying endeavor.  I wholly recommend you check out the behind-the-scenes featurette of the stunt HERE.



Sitting atop the Burj Kalifa, Cruise seems completely in his element here. I don't think you could even pay me a million dollars for me to just sit on top of this beast of a tower. Cruise? A piece of cake, I do this for a living. Bless his twisted soul.

It also doesn't look it's going to stop. This here is a picture of Cruise in a preparation meeting for The Mummy's zero-gravity plane scene. He looks like a kid in the candy store, pumped for the stunt. Cruise does most of his own stunts. Having spoken to a few stuntmen, it's all about the rush. Once you start doing it, it's very hard to stop. Much props to him, I don't think anyone else in Hollywood goes to the extent that Cruise does in making his action scenes look as realistic as possible.

Ridley Scott is pulling a James Cameron, 4 more "Alien" movies coming up

Ridley Scott's output since 2000 has been staggering and the clear artistic high of his storied career. Yes, even though he released "The Duelists," "Blade Runner," "Alien," and "Thelma and Louise," his career between 1977 and 2000 has had more duds than actual good movies, "Legend," "1492," "White Squall," "G.I. Jane," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Black Rain" come to mind as career-killing films. 

Ever since 2000, his directing chops, and taste for good scripts, has been vastly improved, probably due to his enormous experience as an old-school Hollywood pro and having retooled, reshaped if you will, some of his past flaws. There is no doubt in my mind he became a better director: "Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down," "Matchstick Men," "American Gangster," "Kingdom of Heaven (Director's Cut), "The Martian" and, hell, even the underrated "Prometheus" have found Scott in tremendous form these past 16 or so years. 

And so, it is with great disappointment that I deliver the news that he has already planned on making four more movies in the "Alien" franchise. We're already getting "Alien: Covenant" this summer, but it won't be the last one, according to Scott, speaking to Fandago, he has already started work on a whole bunch of other sequels. 

“There will be another one before we kind of literally and logically, clockwise, back into the rear back head of [the original] ‘Alien,’ ” Scott said. “It will go ‘Prometheus,’ ‘Awakening,’ Covenant….[it’s] fairly integral where this colonization ship is on the way…there will be more after this,” If this is successful, and then the next one, and then there will definitely be three more.”

[Fandango]

“Alien: Covenant” opens on May 19th

30 Odds-On Favorites for Cannes 2017 Competition

Deadline and Screen Daily have a nice rundown of what might make it at Cannes this year. I will be attending the festival again this year, which also means speculation will be at an all-time at "World of Reel." I've decide to make a list of the 30 potential contenders for the competition lineup. Usually around 20 films make the final cut. This year there's no shortage of potential: Haneke, Polanski, Haynes, Soderbergh, Payne. 

"Happy End" (Michael Haneke)
"Mektoub is Mektoub" Abdelattif Kechiche)
"Ismael's Ghosts" (Arnaud Despechin)
"Thelma" (Joachim Trier)
"Where Life is Born" (Carlos Reygadas)
"The Square" (Ruben Ostlund)
"Loveless" (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
"Zama" (Lucrecia Martel)
"The Killing of a Sacred Deer" (Yorgos Lanthimos)
"You Were Never Really Here" (Lynn Ramsay)
"Wonderstruck" (Todd Haynes)
"Logan Lucky" (Steven Soderbergh)

"Downsizing" (Alexander Payne)

"Okja" (Jonn Ho Bong)

"Kings" (Deniz Gamze Erguven)

"Jeanette" (Bruno Dumont)

"The Beguiled" (Sofia Coppola)

"War Machine" (David Michod)

"Suburbicon" (George Clooney)

"Under the Silver Lake" (David Robert Mitchell)

"Redoubtable" (Michael Hazanavicius)

"L’Atélier" (Laurent Cantet)
"Claire's Camera" Camera" (Hong San-Hoo)
"Radiance" Naomi Kawase)
"Le Venerable W" (Barbet Schroeder)
"In the Fade" (Faith Akin)
"Mary Magdalene" (Garth Davis)
"Lean on Pete" (Andrew Haigh)
"Submergence" (Wim Wenders)
"Good Time" (Josh and Benny Safdie)

The 2017 Cannes Film Festival runs from the 17 to 28 May. 

Am I missing any here? Based on research these seem like the most set-in-stone. Of course, there's always surprises. Just look at last year with "Toni Erdmann." 

"Venom" movie just got an official release date

The fact that R rated Marvel movies such as "Deadpool" and "Logan" did so well at the box-office has probably helped "Venom" get a quicker than expected relase date. There is a large market out there for R rated Marvel films done with more creative freedom than the PG-13 juggernauts we're so tirelessely accustomed to getting. One thing's for sure though, "Venom" will be bloody violent.  If you remember, Topher Grace played Venom in Spider-Man 3, although the actual symbiotic villain must have had, what, around 5 minutes of screentime?

Marvel has just dated their upcoming Venom movie for October 5, 2018!

[Coming Soon]

Mads Mikkelsen actually walked out of his Fantastic Four audition

Talk about dodging a bullet.

Here's his exact quote:

“I think I walked out on the Fantastic Four [audition],” he said. “I think I actually said, ‘I can’t do it. It’s not about you, I’m sorry, this is wrong’. I’ve had tons of them [like that],” he said. “We’ve all been there. We all show up and it’s a little office room with a desk and some books and they want you to do a scene where you have two lines – maybe not even two lines – maybe just ‘Bleurgh!’ or ‘Get back!’ And you’re hiding behind a palm tree that’s not there. It’s like, ‘Guys, couldn’t you have picked a different kind of scene to this? This is [frick]ing mad.’ You feel like an idiot.”

[Yahoo]

"The Promise" has a poster and loads of controversy behind it

Charlotte has an impressive beard for a woman.

Here's a blurb from my review at TIFF:

"One can feel the importance of retelling these events when it focuses on the right circumstances, but when The Promise sags with cluttered, obvious tropes that have similarly downgraded countless war movies before it, it’s a disappointment. If George set his sights on capturing the effects of this tragic stain in history rather than love-making, we might have gotten a drama worthy of the talent involved."

The film comes out on April 21st.

On a side note, as I wrote 10/25/16, there is much controversy surrounding this film:

"The Turkish government is trying to stop "The Promise" from getting any sort of mainstream media attention. 86,553 votes have been cast on IMDB for the film, 55,126 of which are 1 star rating. The other 30,630 are 10 star ratings. Yikes. It is quite clear that some kind of power or force is trying to stop this film."

"There have been only three public screenings of the film, I was at the premiere and saw it at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this September and thought it wasn't very good, mostly due to the unnecessary love story added into the plot, but the Turkish Government's behavior here is atrocious. They are trying to silence the voice of ancestors and the pain they inflicted upon millions of people because of the genocide they created way back then. They have yet to recognize what happened, so a movie depiction is way out of their train of thought."

This scene from "The Interview," featuring Eminem, never fails to make me laugh

I didn't really think "The Interview" was anything to write home about when it came out a few years ago, but some of the improvised scenes in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's  film really did hit the mark. Maybe the best example is this scene with Eminem admitting on national television that he is gay. Everyone wil probably praise James Franco's acting here, but I have no idea how Eminem could keep a straight face delivering his lines while Franco puts on a loony, Franco-esque act. 

Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" officially rated PG-13

"The MPAA has announced some ratings for upcoming films, and among them is Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated new movie, Dunkirk. The MPAA rated the film “PG-13 for intense war experience and some language.” For those who don’t know, the story is based on Operation Dynamo, a rescue mission that saved 338,226 soldiers from being stranded in Dunkirk, France."

Nolan doesn't do R-rated movies anymore. His last R-rated venture was Insomnia, which some film snobs call his "last great movie," and that was 15 years ago.

To be honest, I am a tad worried about this film getting a PG-13 rating. I believe every great war movie released since the MPAA system was installed has been rated R. This is obviously a tactical move from Warner Bros. to get a much broader audience and maximum performance at the box-office, but sacrificing artistic ambitions for that is not right, if that was the intention of course. Any war film that takes place in the middle of one of the bloodiest battles of the 20th century should get an R? We'll see how this pans out, I don't want to be too quick on the trigger, but the official trailer also underwhelmed me.

Dunkirk opens July 21st.

[Box Office Mojo]

Ben Affleck's "The Batman" script will be completely rewritten

"We can now report that there is more going behind-the-scenes as well. According to sources close to the production, the screenplay for The Batman is being rewritten from the ground up, so it’s entirely possible that everything we’ve heard about the film’s story will no longer be in play."

"For the record, the original screenplay for The Batman was supposedly in flux last month, when it was initially reported that the studio was eyeing a “fresh start.” A day later, it was reported that everyone was happy with the latest draft. Affleck, Chris Terrio, and DC Comics writer and CCO Geoff Johns were among those who worked the first version of the screenplay, which reportedly featured Batman facing off against Deathstroke."

[/Film]

Pixar's latest, "Coco," has a trailer

No surprise, the attention to detail is again just stunningly rendered.

It's likely an animator had to watch a guy play a guitar and time all the animation to the strings being plucked. It is notoriously difficult and time consuming to do animations of playing instruments because if the timing is even a little bit off people will notice subconsciously that it doesn't look or sound right.

I wonder how they're going to make me cry this time around.

Please do check out our Top 10 Pixar movies here to witness the historic greatness of this animation company.

“Coco” opens on November 22nd.

The horror! Warner Bros. will reboot "The Matrix"

It seems like Warner Bros. doesn't think DC movies are enough of a cash cow. The studio has now decided to reboot "The Matrix." I mean, are we that surprised? Everything seems to be getting the reboot treatment these days and who says something as iconic and of its time as "The Matrix" would be left untouched? Of course, the series hit its peak with the first film, the second one wasn't too bad and the third was just atrocious, so there's always room for improvement with the latter films, but this just doesn't ht me the right way, there's something about rebooting The Matrix that doesn't ring true.

The Hollywood Reporter has this:

"It’s still not clear what shape the project will take, but sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Warner Bros. is in the early stages of developing a relaunch of The Matrix, the iconic 1999 sci-fi movie that is considered one of the most original films in cinematic history, with Zak Penn in talks to write a treatment."
 
"Sources say there is potential interest in Michael B. Jordan to star, but much must be done before the project is ready to go. At this point, the Wachowski siblings, who wrote and directed the original and its two sequels, are not involved and the nature of their potential engagement with a new version has not been determined. Certainly, Warners would want the two filmmakers to give at minimum a blessing to the nascent project. The studio had no comment."

Of course the Wachowskis are not involved, why would they be?

Gareth Edwards says we will never see deleted scenes or other versions of "Rogue One"

Last year, I had a very popular piece entitled "What Really Happened On the Set of Rogue One." It ran a few months before "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" would even come out. It turned out to be the site's most popular article ever. An insider close to the production had given us a glimpse of the chaotic production that was happening within the film's shoot. Suffice to say, and we won't go into all the details, but multiple version of the film exist, deleted scenes that supposedly number in the hundreds, and every time somebody from the film talks about it, it always turns out to be a fascinating conversation.

Director Gareth Edwards just spoke to Fandango, here are the most fascinating tidbits we gathered.


On the deleted scenes:

“The stuff people talk about, like what they saw in the trailer, they’re not scenes you can just put on a DVD. They’re moments within scenes and threads, and you pull a thread and it all changes. It was changing the whole time. It’s not like there was one version and then there was this other version — it was like this thing that incrementally evolved constantly through all of post-production and didn’t stop until there was a gun at our heads and we were forced to release the movie,” 

On the most famous deleted shot:  Jyn Erso and the  TIE fighter

 “….it’s going to have to remain a myth because it’s sort of the thing where you’re trying ideas out to find the right version of the movie, and at the same time marketing is getting excited about certain shots and moments. Eventually you’ll see something presented to you and you’ll be like, wait a minute, this shot is no longer in the film,” he added, while also saying the VFX for many of those scenes are still unfinished.

On adding Darth Vader in the last minute:

“He arrives and obliterates the Calamari ship, and then the blockade runner gets out just in time and he pursues the blockade runner. And then [editor] Jabez [Olssen] was like, ‘I think we need to get Darth on that ship,’ and I thought, yeah, that’s a brilliant idea and would love to do it, but there’s no way they’re going to let us do it. It’s a big number and we had, what, like three or four months before release. Kathy [Kennedy] came in and Jabez thought, f**k it, and pitched her this idea, and she loved it. Suddenly within a week or two, we were at Pinewood shooting that scene,”

On the very different ending:

“I think the main thing that changed at the end…what used to happen, and you can get a sense of this in the early trailers, the transmission tower for the plans was separate from the main base on Scarif. To transmit the plans, they had to escape and run along the beach and go up the tower. In cutting the film, it just felt too long. We had to find ways to compress the third act, which was quite long as it was. And one real, fast, brutal solution was to put the tower in the base, so they don’t have to run across the beach and do all of that stuff to get there. That became a decision that eliminated the shots you see in the trailer of the back of Cassian and Jyn and the AT-ATs. That was some of the reinvention that happened. It was all to do with compression.”

[Fandango]

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” comes out on Blu-ray March 24th and on DVD April 4th.