Rogue One: A Star Wars story is facing some new shakeups in the wake of the film's prolonged reshoots. The bad news: incredible Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat will no longer create the score for the first Star Wars standalone film. The good news: incredible Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino will take his place.
As you probably know by now, Rogue One underwent extensive reshoots over the summer, pushing production a number of weeks, and according to THR, that schedule shakeup also altered the scoring calendar. Desplat, who previously composed Argo and The Grand Budapest Hotel, was no longer available to score. In the search for a new composer, Disney and Lucasfilm turned to Giacchino, who has a long history with the studio.
Giacchino's most beloved work has come out of his collaboration with Pixar on the films The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Cars 2, and Inside Out (taking home an Academy Award for his stunning work on Up). He also scored this year's Disney Animation breakout Zootopia, and has previously worked with the live-action division on Sky High, John Carter, and Tomorrowland. He'll make his Marvel debut later this year with Doctor Strange, and now that he's traveling the galaxies for Rogue One, Giacchino will have officially put his stamp on all four of Disney's film divisions.
Giacchino, a self-professed Star Wars fan who previously penned an ode to John Williams' legendary work on the Star Wars scores, is also a career-long collaborator of J.J. Abrams and had a cameo as a storm trooper in The Force Awakens. Fittingly, he now becomes the first composer to work on a Star Wars movie besides Williams.
It certainly seems like Rogue One has been through the ringer ahead of its December 16th release, and while I'm extremely dubious about the studio's claims that the reshoots consisted of minor details (especially considering how significantly it shifted the schedule, as the composer shake-up demonstrates), Giacchino's addition is a promising indication that everyone on board is still trying to make this movie great. And honestly, a Giacchino-composed Star Wars film is kind of a dream come true.
What do you guys think? Is Giacchino the guy to take over the job? Sad to see Desplat go? Sound off in the comments.
