Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One Concept Art

You may have already seen the leaked teaser footage of Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One, which was revealed at an exclusive panel yesterday at Star Wars Celebration. Now, we  have an official piece of concept art to showcase! Check it out:

As you can see, the concept art has a very war-like look to it, which is exactly what Edwards is going for in the overall aesthetic for Rogue One. According to Brian who live-tweeted the panel, “A lot of the crew has worked on war movies. Zero Dark Thirty, Saving Private Ryan, etc.” The director wants it to be “[r]eal… This is a real place that we’re really in…The thing that interests me about it, is Star Wars was basically very black and white. Our movie is gray.”

The official description for the film according is as follows: “A band of resistance fighters unite for a daring mission to steal the Death Star plans in the Star Wars Anthology film, Rogue One.” The premise, according to Edwards, is basically what happens when a group of individuals without “magical powers [the Force]…have to somehow bring hope to the galaxy.” One of the featured characters will be a Rebel soldier, played by The Theory of Everything‘s Felicity Jones.

John Knoll of Industrial Light & Magic, who is also the co-creator of the computer program Photoshop, had the initial idea and was the one to make the pitch for this film. Edwards said after he read the description for Rogue One, “I couldn’t sit in a cinema and know that someone else made this film.” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy liked the project as well, of course, or she wouldn’t have approved it. Clearly, there’s a lot of excitement among the crew at Lucasfilm for this.

Kiri Hart from the Lucasfilm story group describes the spinoffs as “Anthology films,” saying, “I think this as opportunity for us to tap into emergent directing talent out there and do some things that are unexpected.”

Kennedy, who was also on the Gareth Edwards panel, gives credit to George Lucas for the idea of doing spinoffs. “[Lucas] [w]as really interested in exploring all the stories that existed inside the universe,” she said. Thanks, Mr. Lucas!

So that’s the lowdown for the first Star Wars Anthology film! Keep an eye on Dork Side, as we await a better quality teaser video to hit the web.