If you’ve been keeping up with Star Wars news over the past few years, you’re already aware that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is more than just the first movie in a new trilogy. The billion dollar blockbuster is also the revival of a dormant franchise, and by this time next year, we’ll have already seen another Star Wars movie by the name of Rogue One.

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All we really know about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is that it will be set between Episode III and IV and will focus on a group of Rebel spies as they attempt to steal the plans for the Death Star from the Empire.

It sounds like a fascinating premise — the first spinoff movie in franchise history and one that will focus on characters outside of the Skywalker lineage — but there were apparently significant difficulties when it came to putting the story together.

Back in October, Latino-Review published a report in which sources claimed that Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation director Christopher McQuarrie was brought on help polish up the script after several other writers had gotten their hands on it.

This development came and went without much fanfare, but on Monday, Birth.Movies.Death. released a similar report. According to BMD’s sources, the story was originally conceived by Industrial Light & Magic CCO John Knoll, the script was penned by Gary Whitta and then The Golden Compass director Chris Weitz took a pass at it.

Despite having been in the hands of three capable artists previously, Disney reportedly wasn’t happy with the direction of the script, and so McQuarrie was called in to fix the spinoff. One source went so far as to say that he “saved” the movie. That’s a bold claim, but we’ll see if it’s accurate when Rogue One releases on December 16th.