Mads Mikkelsen Thinks Rogue One Was Shot Without a Finished Script

Rogue One has always had that mythic, last-minute-save energy around it. Now Mads Mikkelsen says the chaos was very real — to the point where he never felt like there was an actual locked script.

Mads says the script kept changing (and changing)

Chatting with Variety, Mikkelsen — who played Galen Erso, the Death Star scientist with a conscience — said the story was constantly in flux during production. New ideas, rewrites, adjustments, reshoots, repeat. For him, that was manageable because Galen had a clear purpose. But for the leads trying to carry the emotional load of the movie from scene to scene, it got trickier.

"I dont think they ever locked in a draft."

He describes it as a back-and-forth process that never really settled until the finish line. Still, he says the end result turned out to be a really nice film — which, given the well-documented late-stage reshoots, is its own little miracle.

How Rogue One aged into a fan favorite

Rogue One did well when it dropped, but its stock has only climbed since. Tony Gilroy’s Andor gave the movie extra weight in hindsight, filling in character and world details that make Rogue One hit even harder. Some fans call it the best Star Wars movie of the Disney era. Director Gareth Edwards doesn’t go that far himself, but he’s clearly grateful for how the film has landed with people over time. His take, boiled down: focus on the long game. The day-one reactions matter less than what audiences feel 10 or 20 years later — the real reward is the kid who comes up to you years down the road and says they loved it.

What Mads is doing next

• Recently headlined Dust Bunny, an action thriller written and directed by Bryan Fuller (creator of Hannibal).
• Reportedly set to join Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in Martin Scorsese’s What Happens at Night.