Official Gary Whitta Discussion Thread

With all respect to Gary, who the heck gave this guy a Star Wars project? Did anyone see After Earth? (That's both rhetorical and non-rhetorical at the same time) That is some of the worst writing and directing of all time (granted, only the former being Whitta's fault). Book of Eli was fine, but nothing to write home about. Could someone please enlighten me as to what other projects makes this guy qualified to write Star Wars?

 

THR - 'Star Wars' Standalone Movie Loses Writer Gary Whitta (Exclusive)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-standalone-movie-loses-762372

 

Can't say I'm all that broken up about Whitta's departure. In all honesty I couldn't believe he was given the job in the first place. I just hope his ideas went with him.

 

It will be interesting to see if this affects the release of the movie. I remember hearing rumors that stuff was being prepared for filming at Pinewood soon. Wonder if they will work around this.

 

What is it with the Disney era? The juggling of writers/drafts on TFA and now this? Yeesh. It's too bad for Gary... perhaps the bit about him in the Sony email leaks took a toll. (Background: the execs moan about wanting certain screenwriters... everyone wants to work on a Star Wars project it seems... one of the execs mentions stalking the writers to try and get them onto a Sony project... all the writers except Whitta who "blows" acc. to the exec.)

However, it's more likely that he turned his draft in and the producers either weren't happy with it or decided to go in a different direction.

Just gives us one more draft to hunt down later. Will be fun to compare them all once the films are said and done.

 

look like three posts up lol

 

Woops. I'm off this project too now. Slacking. Lolz. Tweaked my post to fuel discussion though.

 

The writing situation is nearly identical to TFA, with preproduction well underway and apparently principle photography scheduled in the very near future. Whatever screenplay exists won't be modified greatly - no time, and money's already been spent on building sets, casting, costumes and special effects, one would surmise. Which means there is confidence in whatever story has been drawn up. Perhaps it's the way it was expanded from rough draft to shooting screenplay that requires a reworking, just as Ardnt's work was tweaked and the design of locations and character emphasis reframed.

 

He's out, but it doesn't seem like the Arndt situation. Whitta seems to have enjoyed his time on the writing, and filming should be starting really really soon. Seems more like a "Cya later, gotta hit another project and slog through the actual movie LOL" Sounds just like Whitta actually...

 

Just a shot from the dark here:
These movies are too big for the britches of one writer. The layers of depth of a movie of this (these) size requires lots of ideas (from old concepts to new concepts to shareholder interests to merchandising interests) to be meshed into a script, deliberated upon, and then rewritten again from a different perspective while keeping elements of the old script for that necessary depth (or offshoot projects like novels, games, etc.). For this reason, I believe the leaving of one writer and the hiring of another writer makes perfect sense to me.

Of course, the media will twist it any way they can to get clicks.

In summary, more writers = more layers = more potential outlets for merchandising and offshoot products = no one writer getting recognition for the final work = lawyers happy (Fun bit of IP law here! Yes, you can sign away your rights and still come back and claim rights x decades later if you can prove your overwhelming contribution to a work.)

From another angle that is more informative rather than applying directly to SW:
Kubrick used to hire a writer, get to know them and their sworn enemy. After the first draft, he'd fire that writer and hire his sworn enemy to rewrite the script. The final movie would be a mishmash of Kubrick's own vision, the first writer, and the second writer. Suffice to say, Kubrick made many enemies this way. Did he care? Take a guess. And did his movies have massive rewatch value because of these layers? Oh yes.

 

Seems like he fulfilled his contract and the departure was no surprise. I don't think he was fired. Perhaps he'll be back to retool the script, or Edwards will do it himself, or Kasdan as rumored months ago. I think people are making more of it than it is. Just my opinion.

 

http://www.slashfilm.com/rumor-simon-kinberg-star-wars-standalone-writer/

 

Much to many folk's dismay on various Star Wars forums, I'm a big fan of Mr. Whitta; most of my admiration comes from listening to hours of him on the This is Only a Test podcast from www.tested.com. Anyway, on the latest episode of This is Only a Test (http://www.tested.com/tech/491566-episode-287-garys-back-again-252015/), Gary Whitta describes his month long trip to London in December, a mostly work related trip that was paid for by Disney to finish up duties with the first spinoff. This confirms that Whitta's movement from the project was in fact a successful completion of his portion of the process, and the relationship was definitely amiable. No new details on the spinoff, but thought this was good confirmation of the status of the relationship.

 

read the article on the main page. interesting dude that's for sure. Collaboration is best for star wars...you saw what happened it over to one man. gotta hand it to George though. he stuck to his guns. he said this is my artistic vision and I don't care if you don't like it.

 

By this picture of him that he put on his FB profile weeks after he was hired to write the script looks like he was already giving a hint of the title/possible plot without we even know it