Tag: gary whitta

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Report: Why Whitta left the first Star Wars spinoff

rumors-swirl-sw-yavinCinelinx says they know why screenwriter Gary Whitta is off Gareth Edwards’ Star Wars film: Because, as many of us guessed, that’s exactly what he was hired to do. They also maintain that Simon Kinberg is coming on.

And, for the record, none of this is particularly unusual:

This isn’t a new thing, by any stretch of the imagination, as studios have long used this model to develop their films, bringing in writers to finish a script from the basic draft, and we hear about it all the time. The reason this seems like such a big deal is that it’s freaking STAR WARS, and people seemed to want to sensationalize the news.

Their source has also heard that Whitta’s script was too expensive for the film’s budget. (Budget? Star Wars? Well, yeah: It’s still a business, and if anyone is getting a blank check here it’s certainly not a standalone.) That’s likely to be one of the things that Kinberg deals with.

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Rumor: Kinberg taking over for Whitta on Spinoff #1?

kinbergWe know that Gary Whitta is done with his part on Gareth Edwards’ Star Wars spinoff, but could Simon Kinberg be stepping in? That’s what /Film has heard. Kinberg is already firmly entrenched in the franchise, and was even originally announced as the writer of an eventual standalone, though he hasn’t been officially attached to any of the films as of yet.

In other words, he’s the perfect person to tweak and polish Whitta’s script – perhaps that was the plan all along?

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Writer Gary Whitta moves on from first Star Wars spinoff

whitta-script-tweetAccording to The Hollywood Reporter and Gary Whitta himself, his time on director Gareth Edwards’ Star Wars spinoff is up.

THR says there will be a new writer, but Lucasfilm isn’t naming anyone just yet. Whatever the case, this doesn’t appear to be quite as dramatic as what we saw with Michael Arndt* and Episode VII, and the new writer may very well just be tweaking Whitta’s script.

I don’t expect we’ll hear anything definitive until/if Lucasfilm chooses to give us their crew breakdown, assuming they follow a similar template to The Force Awakens‘ announcements… Though at this point, I’m not expecting anything until they actually begin filming. That’s expected to happen in a matter of months, given the December 16, 2016 release date.

* Granted, Michael Arndt was not on Twitter. Whitta is pretty awesome at it, Star Wars or no Star Wars.

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Star Wars spin-off #1 moving into Pinewood soon

Day 1 at PinewoodMaking Star Wars reports that a production office for Gareth Edwards’ Star Wars film will be moving into Pinewood soon. The latest James Bond film, Spectre, began filming earlier this month, and it’s expected that much of the crew will move back onto Star Wars when that’s done.

We still know little-to-nothing about the Edwards film, our first standalone. Solidly, we only know that it’s being written by Gary Whitta and has a release date of December 16, 2016. Cinematographer Greig Fraser has admitted to being on board.

Rumorwise, there’s a supposed plot and a code name, plus the usual litany of wish-listed character names like Boba Fett.

There has not been a single casting rumor, which seems pretty odd… Or maybe not. In any case, we’ll probably hear something by spring, just as we did when The Force Awakens began filming. Jason at MSW hopes we’ll get more details about this once things really get going, and I’d be happy just to not have to call it ‘Spin-off #1’ at some point.

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Rumor: The plot of the first Star Wars standalone?

rumors-swirl-sw-ootMoving aside from the developing trailer madness, we have a report from /Film of the plot of the first spin-off from director Gareth Edwards and writer Gary Whitta. They claim it involves something we saw done multiple times in the old EU: The theft of the Death Star plans. Except this one involves bounty hunters and a character we might actually met in The Force Awakens first.

It’s not the kind of character-centric story we were expecting, but still sounds like something that will quite firmly fall into the ‘origin stories’ quote we have from Disney CFO Jay Rasulo. Thoughts?

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Today in Episode VII: Another actor on Skellig Michael

→ Today word comes that [redacted] isn’t the only actor filming scenes on Ireland’s Skellig Michael. [Redacted] is there as well, per The Movie Bit – just as some suspected due to the fuzzy paparazzi pics the other day. This is supposedly the third and last day of filming on the island. Making Star Wars has a buddy in the area.

Rumors!→ Meanwhile, some WWE guy, Sheamus O’Shaunessy, is apparently also hanging out in Ireland and double negativing over Darth Vader. Okay then. (Also, if we must take this seriously, well, I’ll just leave this over here.)

→ Not Episode VII, but close enough: Spin-off screenwriter Gary Whitta is totally down with writing a Star Wars novel.

→ And even more tangentially, sequel actors Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson have nabbed some more high profile gigs.

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Godzilla director to helm first Star Wars spin-off film

Gareth Edwards directs Elizabeth Olsen in 2014's Godzilla

StarWars.com has announced the creative team for the first standalone Star Wars film: Directing will be Gareth Edwards. He doesn’t have a long resume, but he’s the man behind Hollywood’s latest Godzilla. On script duties is Gary Whitta, who wrote The Book of Eli, After Earth and several Walking Dead video games. The film, whatever it may be, has even been given a release date: December 16, 2016.

This raises a few big questions: We’ve previously heard that spin-offs would be written by Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg, but they are both rather busy: Kasdan has Episode VII, and Kinberg has his fingers in any number of pies. Are Edwards and Whitta doing Boba Fett, as recent rumors say that’s the first? Will Kasdan and Kinberg still be tackling their own spin-offs later on?

As for Edwards and Whitta themselves… I got nothing. The new Godzilla, his first big-budget feature, has been mostly well-received (though rather lacking in the women’s roles.) I’ve seen After Earth, and while it wasn’t great, I’m not sure how much of that you can lay at Whitta’s feet.

And we still have no idea of what their Star Wars film will actually be about. Count me in the shrug column for now.