Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One announced as the official Star Wars standalone title as new details revealed

Star Wars Celebration has been in full force across the pond in Anaheim this weekend, and on its final day this year, Gareth Edwards took to the stage with Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy to reveal details about the forthcoming Star Wars standalone film Rogue One starring Oscar nominee Felicity Jones. Hence forth the Star Wars prequel standalone will be known as Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One. What’s more the official synopsis of the film confirms what many have speculated, that it will focus on a rogue band of resistance fighters who unite for a daring mission to steal the Death Star plans. The announcement was accompanied with a short teaser put together by the team at ILM which began with a deep rumble, before showing the verdant trees of a lush forest planet not dissimilar to Yavin IV. Birds fly above the canopy as the camera pans up to look out over the tree line, we then hear the legendary speech by Alec Guinness in Star Wars where he explains what the Jedi are “For more than a thousand generations the Jedi knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.” The teaser ends with the howl of a TIE Fighter is heard as it flies overhead and above the trees toward the mountain range on the horizon, outlined by the silvery silhouette of a moon. As the camera persepective shifts and the trees move away, we see the truth: that’s no moon… it’s a space station! The outline of the Death Star looms large above the forest planet and a few bars of the Imperial March are heard as Guinness continues. “Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” The screen goes black and the squawk of battlefield comms chatter builds to a crescendo with shouts and screaming before cutting to the title card: Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One. Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One begins shooting this summer with Felicity Jones taking the lead as a Republic Soldier. Talking about Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One, Edwards said “It’s set after Episode III, before Episode IV. It’s basically in an era where there are no Jedi, where they’re all but extinct. It’s about the fact that God’s not coming to save us. We’re on our own and we have to do this ourselves. The absence of Jedi is omnipresent in the film, it hangs over the whole movie. It comes down to a group of individuals who don’t have special powers but have to bring hope and justice to the galaxy.” Edwards also stated that Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One will be a down-to-earth war film. It was also revealed that the concept for the film was pitched to Kathleen Kennedy by ILM’s John Knoll when she had just taken over Lucasfilm. The idea was apparently too good to turn down. When they decided to greenlight the project, Hart contacted Edwards and sent him a treatment, Edwards was still in the thick of Godzilla at the time and initially had wanted to take 6 months off and he recalled “I read it thinking ‘please be rubbish, please be rubbish, please hate it.’ I got to the end, read the last paragraph and thought ‘oh fuck!’ I couldn’t sit in a cinema and know that someone else had made this film. There was no option.” We also learned from Kathleen Kennedy that “[The standalone films] were really George’s idea, it was one of the first things he sat down and talked about. He was really interested in exploring all the stories that might exist inside this universe.” Written by Chris Weitz and a few other collaborators were also revealed at the panel. Zero Dark Thirty’s Greig Fraser will be DoP, Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down’s Neil Corbould will head up VFX and Neal Scanlan will head the creature team, Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One hits cinemas in December 2016. Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One Film Page STAR WARS ANTHOLOGY: ROGUE ONE HITS CINEMAS IN DECEMBER 2016