FILM · 2016
Rogue One
217 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
10 Facts From the Making of Rogue One
- #003
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the first draft of the script, Jyn and Cassian survived the events of the film, even though director Gareth Edwards wanted all the heroes to die. After speaking with Kathleen Kennedy and Disney executives, he voiced this view, and surprisingly Kennedy agreed and gave him permission to kill the characters.
- #024
Before the attack on the flying tank, Cassian mentions the "Guardians of the Whills" while talking with Jyn on Jedha. "The Star Wars: From the Journal of the Whills" was the original working title of George Lucas's story. The Whills were wise beings who told their students the saga of Star Wars and explained that it had actually happened "a long time ago in a galaxy far away." This framing device was ultimately deemed unnecessary and abandoned. There is a fan consensus that Yoda's species is the Whills, but this was never officially confirmed.
- #039
The idea of the kyber crystal appeared in the early drafts of George Lucas's original film and was first articulated in Alan Dean Foster's novel "Splinter of the Mind's Eye," the first original Star Wars novel, published after the premiere of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). In the novel, based on Lucas's idea for a possible sequel, the "kaiburr crystal" was an artifact that gave the Jedi enormous power over the Force.
- #048
Alan Tudyk initially turned down the role of K-2SO because the start of filming conflicted with pre-production on the crowdfunded comedy series Con Man (2015). He agreed to join the production when Gareth Edwards said filming had been delayed by a month to July 2015. To prepare for his role, he took mask lessons from mask teacher Orlando Pabotoy, who lives in New York, and learned to express more through body language. He has since said this was one of the best roles he has worked on, because it allowed him to wear a motion-capture suit on set as well as the advantage of walking on 13-inch stilts. Tudyk shot a brief scene appearing as his character Wray Nerely from "Con Man," but the scene was deleted.
- #050
Composer Alexandre Desplat's original film score was rejected because of extensive reshoots made to address tone and story issues. This extended the post-production schedule, during which he was unavailable due to his commitments to Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017). His replacement, Michael Giacchino, had only one month to write the score.
- #077
The reason the opening crawl is not shown was explained by Gareth Edwards in a January 2017 interview. "We knew from the beginning that John Williams wouldn't be available for our film, the decision about the opening crawl was made before we started shooting, Gary Whitta actually wrote one in the first draft, you'll have to bother him about that. I believe the crawl words are actually floating somewhere in space - we just need to fund NASA well enough for their deep space telescopes to find them. Let's crowdfund this and make it happen." Several fans reached out to Whitta on Twitter asking whether he would reveal the opening crawl. He refused to tweet it on his Twitter account: "It's not mine to share, I wrote it but Lucasfilm owns it."
- #127
Other titles considered for this film during production included "Rise of the Empire," "Shadow of the Death Star" and "Dark Times." The title "Rogue One" was finally decided upon when they determined it was not part of the Skywalker saga; it is the "rogue" one.
- #182
There had previously been plans to include Peter Cushing in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) using a combination of archival footage and digital effects, but the idea was abandoned.
- #189
It grossed $26 million domestically on Christmas Day, the second-biggest Christmas Day gross in history after Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), which grossed $49 million.
- #205
While Gareth Edwards was in post-production on Godzilla (2014), he was asked to attend a meeting about Star Wars. Although he was thoroughly exhausted from working on a big-budget SFX film, he did not hesitate to meet with Kathleen Kennedy.
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