Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Put Gareth Edwards Off Directing Big-Budget Sci-Fi

Among the many unfortunate side effects of our current era of blockbuster-obsessive Hollywood filmmaking is the trend of studios grabbing indie directors who have only ever worked with tiny budgets and giving them huge franchise movies with nine-figure price tags. These inexperienced directors are suddenly thrown into a world of executives, giant studios, fan expectations, and many other problems. Some make the transition unscathed. Others aren't so lucky.

In the case of Gareth Edwards, he went from his micro-budgeted debut feature "Monsters" to making the first U.S. "Godzilla" movie in almost two decades before being thrown into the first "Star Wars" spin-off movie, "Rogue One." While all three films were financially successful and well-regarded critically, it was "Rogue One" that proved disheartening to the director, who kind of swore off big-budget sci-fi movies for years until "The Creator," his upcoming movie that predicted the big AI dilemma of 2023.

"I needed to get off the merry-go-round, do you know what I mean?" Edwards said about taking a break from directing when talking to SFX magazine for the publication's upcoming issue. "In Hollywood, you can get stuck on the hamster wheel, or whatever analogy you want to use. I just wanted to get off and have a break to take some time thinking about the next thing."

"Rogue One" was, by all accounts, a difficult production, with extensive reshoots that reportedly changed most of the original third act. Reportedly, the film's credited co-writer Tony Gilroy even took over some of the directing duties from Edwards, prior to creating the spinoff series "Andor."

For Edwards, the expectations and pressure of having a massive budget proved daunting. "It was kind of a shock to have all the money you could ever want, and still be limited," the director said. "I felt like if I could somehow get that big bag of cash and send it back in time to me when I was making 'Monsters,' the possibilities would have been infinite. And so, in a weird way, I was trying to find that kind of scenario again. I was as much interested in the process of how to make the film as I was the idea."

It was this desire to bring back the low-budget experience of working on "Monsters" that drove Edwards to make sure his latest film, "The Creator," was creatively satisfying while still working within the studio system. The solution, the director explained, came down to the budget. "The initial trick was for this to not be a big-budget movie. If it's big-budget, crazy money, I think we would have scared everyone off," he said, having initially designed the film to be done cheaply while still having a massive scope. "The reality is, I don't know how I would have pulled off like 1,000 VFX shots of robots."

"The Creator" opens in theaters on September 29, 2023.