Chaos Walking, Doug Liman’s big-budget adaptation of the best-selling YA novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, is the latest big-budget movie to undergo significant reshoots, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
And, because of complicated scheduling issues with stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, the reshoots could very likely force Lionsgate to push back the movie’s release date, which is currently slated for March 1, 2019.
Lionsgate is spending between $90 million and $100 million on the pic, an ambitious sci-fi thriller that the studio hopes will launch a franchise that can stand out amid superhero movies, remakes and sequel tentpoles.
The “additional photography” is expected to last two or three weeks but will not take place until the end of this year or early next, sources tell THR. That marks an unusual delay, given the film finished shooting principal photography last November, but insiders point out that the delay is because the movie’s two stars are so in demand.
Holland is due to shoot the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, while Ridley will be at work on Star Wars: Episode IX, both of which take up the summer months. Regardless, it would be a tight turnaround to make the current release date and insiders are planning, at this stage, on the opening date to shift. Lionsgate had no comment.
Chaos Walking is set on a colony planet where almost all women have been killed by a virus and all living creatures hear one another’s thoughts in a stream of images, words and sounds called Noise. The cacophony drives many mad until a young man (Holland) makes a silent discovery: There is a girl (Ridley) who may be the key to unlocking the New World’s many-layered secrets.
Ness, the author of the trilogy who also wrote A Monster Calls as well as its film adaptation, is in negotiations to write the new script pages for the planned reshoot. He will be joining a roster of screenwriters that includes Charlie Kaufman, Lindsey Beers, John Lee Hancock and Gary Spinelli, all of whom previously worked on the complicated and unique story.
Reshoots are becoming par for the course for big-budget movies. THR reported last week that X-Men: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants will also undergo additional photography. In fact, some major movies, like those made by Marvel, budget for extra shooting days that can be completed well after principal photography, since such productions have become more complex and elaborate.
Liman is also no stranger to reshoots himself as a number of his films, such as The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow, have undergone rework to various degrees, finally coming together in postproduction.
