Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett Went Through Significant Rewrites Even After Filming

One of the major challenges with Star Wars stories featuring helmeted characters is that audiences don’t get to see emotions on a character’s face, but the advantage of these restrictions is that recording dialogue for these characters can allow for changes long after filming, with Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett star Emily Swallow recalling how many ADR lines changed from what was originally filmed. The actor didn’t detail exactly what about the role had changed, though pointed out how wearing the helmets caused some difficulties yet ultimately allowed the filmmakers to tell the best story they could. 

“We need that connection in the scenes. It wouldn’t play the same,” Swallow recalled of not being able to hear fellow actors while at MCM London back in May, per Popverse. “You can’t see our lips move — it wouldn’t play the same if we were sort of guessing what the other one was saying. It wouldn’t have the right energy. There is still a timing to it. There’s still a connection to it.”

She continued, “My episode of The Book of Boba Fett, I spend three or four hours in an ADR session — which, if you don’t know, stands for Additional Dialogue Recording, and it’s when you have to record stuff after you’ve already shot it — because they changed so many of the lines. Which you can do when you can’t see somebody’s mouth open.”

The embrace of ADR for The Book of Boba Fett or The Mandalorian isn’t entirely unexpected, as countless other movies and TV shows utilize the filmmaking technique to tweak a project in post-production, though many of those projects have limited options of needing a character to be off-screen to insert dialogue that sounds organic. Given that The Book of Boba Fett didn’t undergo massive reshoots, it would seem unlikely that any significant changes were made to the overall trajectory of the series in post-production, yet the extensive ADR confirms more fine-tuning than what Swallow seemingly experienced with The Mandalorian.

While fans can likely expect Swallow to be involved in the upcoming The Mandalorian & Grogu movie, it’s currently unknown if there will ever be a Season 2 of Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett. Based on how many characters overlap between these series, and with Dave Filoni developing an original movie set during this time period, it’s expected we’ll also see Boba Fett again, yet it’s unknown when or where.

Stay tuned for updates on the future of Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian, and The Mandalorian & Grogu.

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