Category Archives: Rogue One
Inside the Creation of the Droid K-2SO
Via Abcnews.go.com:
The scene-stealing droid K-2SO in “Rogue One” may be from a galaxy far, far away, but his origin story begins inside the San Francisco headquarters of visual effects powerhouse Industrial Light & Magic, or ILM.
Creating K-2SO — a completely digital character based on a real-life performance by actor Alan Tudyk was the work of hundreds of concept artists, animators and digital artists at ILM, including Landis Fields.
“It’s a huge team,” said Fields, who also helped build droid BB-8 for “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.” “For Kaytoo, they knew that they wanted to have the footprint look like something that wasn’t just a man in a suit.”
Fields built many of K-2SO’s complex moving parts, including wrist, knee and elbow joints in a 3-D computer program. From there, other artists digitally assembled, textured and painted the 3-D model to transform it into the final movie version.
Fields said part of K-2SO’s design was inspired by a Disney theme park ride — but not just any ride.
“Star Tours has this motion base that basically allows the ride to move and simulate the feeling of gravity. So, we wanted to pay homage to that,” Fields said. “Everybody liked it. So, after the motion tests, we integrated it into the shoulders and the hips, actually.”
While shooting “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” Tudyk was on the set playing K-2SO so that filmmakers could capture realistic interactions with fellow cast members, including Felicity Jones and Diego Luna.
“If you do it later, it’s not going to make any sense. It’s not going to gel with the rest of the actors,” Tudyk said.
As cameras rolled, Tudyk wore a special motion capture suit along with stilts that brought him to Kaytoo’s proper height of seven feet.
The motion capture system allowed Tudyk’s performance to be recorded on-set, and later applied to the K-2SO model. Digital artists then erased Tudyk from the original shot and replaced him with his droid alter-ego.
“The whole idea is to give the actor the best opportunity to do their work,” said “Rogue One” animation supervisor Hal Hickel. “And the best place for them to do that is on set with the other actors, interacting with them, that’s where the magic happens.”
Fields, part of an ILM team that just scored an outstanding virtual cinematography nomination from the Visual Effects Society for “Doctor Strange,” said seeing K-2SO on the big screen is surreal.
“You kind of now know the magic behind it,” Fields said. “So, that’s a lot of fun — just knowing what happens behind the curtain.”
How The New Star Wars Rebels Connected To Rogue One
Via Cinemablend.com:
Superhero franchises are typically the first thing that comes to mind when we bring up the topic of interconnected worlds, but Star Wars has gradually started to become one of the best cinematic universes in all of pop culture. As the silver screen Star Wars world continues to flesh itself out, its small screen counterpart has gone a long way towards providing backstory, as well as linking characters, locations, and ideas. Star Wars Rebels has done a phenomenal job with shouldering those responsibilities over the course of its run, and the most recent episode continued that tradition by linking the Death Star’s origins on Geonosis with the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
As recently pointed out by io9, the latest two-part episode of Star Wars Rebels directly tied into the narrative of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and provided some much-needed context regarding the development and secrecy of the Death Star. The episode (titled, “Ghosts of Geonosis”) explores the aftermath of the creation of the first Death Star, and the Empire’s distrust of the Geonosis population following its completion. As the story progresses, Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whitaker) and his team of rebels learn that The Empire practically wiped out the Geonosian to maintain the integrity of its secrets.
The bulk of the story follows the heroes as they help a lone survivor of the Geonosian planet as he endeavors to safeguard an egg that could repopulate his race. The episode is chock full of amazing Star Wars Easter eggs, including a not so subtle hint at the Empire’s ultimate weapon, and helps inform the development of Gerrera into the man movie audiences meet during the events of Rogue One.
This episode will undoubtedly go down as a fundamental aspect of the Star Wars lore because of the way in which it fleshes out the creeping relevance and menace of the Death Star. There has been a significant gap in the Star Wars mythology ever since the release of Attack of the Clones because the exact fate of Geonosis has ever really received too much exploration. In this one episode, Star Wars Rebels can tie up some seriously loose plot threads left behind by the prequel trilogy while filling in the story leading up to the latest Star Wars movie.
Rogue One Opens to $31 Million in China
Via Gamespot.com:
Rogue One opens in the world’s second-largest movie market.
Star Wars: Rogue One opened in China, the world’s second-largest movie market, on January 6. The numbers are now in, and we know that the sci-fi spinoff made $31 million over its first three days.
That’s a fairly “tepid” box office haul, according to CNBC. Citing numbers from ComScore, the site reported that Rogue One made about 60 percent less than what the The Force Awakens made in its first two days in theaters in the country last year. Rogue One was never expected to make as much money as The Force Awakens in China or other markets around the world, so this is not surprising.
Still, Rogue One was the No. 1 movie at the Chinese box office this past weekend. It was also the top-grossing movie in the US, marking its fourth straight week at the top of the charts.
The Star Wars series overall does not historically do as well in China; CNBC adds: “Many Chinese were not familiar with the original Star Wars trilogy when The Force Awakens marketing machine revved up.”
Disney pushed Rogue One in China with a marketing blitz that included a poster that prominently featured the movie’s Chinese stars, Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang.
Worldwide, Rogue One has now made more than $914 million, according to CNBC. That makes it one of 2016’s highest-grossing films.
The next Star Wars movie is Episode VIII, which comes out this December.
Rogue One Is Second Highest-Grossing Star Wars Movie Ever
Via Movieweb.com:
Rogue One simply cannot be stopped at the box office, proving to be another massive hit for Disney and Lucasfilm. The standalone Star Wars adventure recently won its 4th weekend in a row at the box office, which has helped push it over a very significant milestone. The movie has now officially surpassed Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, making it the second highest-grossing movie domestically in the history of the franchise.
According to Box Office Mojo, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has made $477 million at the domestic box office, which easily puts it ahead of the $431 million take of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. That is unreasonably impressive, considering that when Episode I came out it was arguably the most anticipated Star Wars movie ever be released up to that point. One could still possibly argue that no Star Wars movie has matched that level of hype before or since, but either way, the fact that Star Wars: Rogue One has already outgrossed the first Star Wars prequel is an impressive feat.
On the worldwide side of things, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story still has some way to go in order to catch Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which has a total take of $983 million. As of this writing, Rogue One has $914 million, but the movie still has a long way to go and should easily wind up crossing the $1 billion mark, making it only the second Star Wars movie ever to do so. The first being Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which went on to become the third highest-grossing movie ever made and is the single highest-grossing movie domestically, having brought in a staggering $936 million.
Nobody was expecting Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to do what The Force Awakens box office numbers did, since it was the first live-action Star Wars movie to be released in a decade and there was a crazy amount of hype leading up to it. While Rogue One did have the benefit of Darth Vader, it largely featured new characters and was the first ever theatrically released Star Wars movie to take place outside of the main Skywalker saga. When taking that into account, the fact that Star Wars: Rogue One will easily gross $1 billion by the end of its theatrical run should make Disney and Lucasfilm very happy.
The more than $4 billion that Disney paid to acquire Lucasfilm back in 2012 seems to be an investment that is paying off handsomely, and there is plenty more to come. This year, Star Wars: Episode VIII will grace the big screen and should once again rule the month of December. The next standalone Star Wars story will be the upcoming young Han Solo movie, which is currently gearing up for production and is currently slated for a May 2018, release, but it has been highly speculated that Disney will shift it to a December release, given their recent success. In as much as a Star Wars movie can be considered a risk, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a risk, but one that paid off in a big way.
Michael Giacchino On ‘Rogue One’ Score
Via Variety.com:
Having scored “Zootopia,” “Star Trek Beyond,” “Doctor Strange” and the still unreleased “Book of Henry” in 2016, composer Michael Giacchino was ready for a nice long vacation. Flights were set, hotels booked.
Then, as he was finishing “Doctor Strange” in mid-September, the phone rang. Alexandre Desplat had dropped out of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” due to scheduling issues. Would he consider taking it on?
Vacation cancelled.
He flew home from the final “Strange” sessions in London on a Friday and started writing “Rogue One” on Monday. He would have just four and a half weeks to compose more than two hours of music for the first standalone “Star Wars” film, a prequel to the original 1977 adventure.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make. But, Giacchino confesses, “When I was 9, I saw ‘Star Wars’ and it set me on a path to where I am today. There was this need inside of me to make sure that this film felt like what I loved as a kid, as a fan, somebody who grew up playing with the action figures.”
In fact, he still has those action figures and brought them with him to the recording sessions at Sony that first week of November. It was only then, when his 110-piece orchestra launched into John Williams’ original “Star Wars” theme, that he began to have second thoughts: “Why did I say yes to this? What was I thinking?”
Yet, while he acknowledges that no one can top Williams, Giacchino felt up to the task. “There were all these new characters, so they needed new themes. But I wanted it to feel like ‘Star Wars.’ It’s a very specific style of orchestration and composing, grounded in Ravel, Prokofiev, Holst – in the same way that George (Lucas), when he was making ‘Star Wars,’ looked to ‘Flash Gordon’ and all those serials that inspired him when he was growing up.”
Despite fleeting references to original Williams themes, “98 percent of the score is all new,” Giacchino says, including themes for Jyn (Felicity Jones), Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), the Guardians of the Whills (Donnie Yen, Jiang Wen) and, especially, a “hope” theme for the Rebel Alliance – whose final appearance includes a 80-voice choir.
It’s a war movie, Giacchino points out. A veteran of war music for video games like “Medal of Honor” and “Call of Duty,” he says, “I’ve always wanted to do a World War II film, and I feel like I just had my chance.”
Unlike those previous projects, however, this score didn’t need to be filled with bravado, he adds. There is a heartrending moment near the end of the film that needed “a sense of hope and a sense of loss. I wanted it to feel like a church hymn. It’s about sacrifice, and I didn’t want it to be completely maudlin; I wanted it to feel balanced, for what (the rebels) accomplished.”
It’s a little-known fact that Giacchino played a storm trooper in the previous “Star Wars” movie, “The Force Awakens.” Director J.J. Abrams is an old friend (dating back to their work on “Alias” and “Lost”), so he flew to London, suited up as FN-3181, “got to have the fun part of the gig, and I thought that was the end of it.”
Prior to “Rogue One,” Giacchino created a mystical mood for Marvel’s “Doctor Strange,” spiced with the unusual colors of harpsichord and electric sitar; Disney’s animated “Zootopia,” for which he again reached back into his childhood, writing a ’70s-style TV-cop-show theme for the rabbit and fox detective partners; and “Star Trek Beyond,” his third trip into outer space with the Enterprise crew.
So is it time for that vacation? “Nope,” Giacchino says ruefully. As soon as his Christmas break is over, he dives into two more huge projects: “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” his second visit to the Marvel Universe; and “War for the Planet of the Apes,” his second score for Fox’s ongoing Apes saga.
How ‘Rogue One’s’ Princess Leia, Grand Moff Tarkin Were Created
The Reason ‘Rogue One’ Didn’t Have the Classic ‘Star Wars’ Crawl
Via Abcnews.go.com:
Three weeks after hitting theaters nationwide, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is still crushing it.
The “Star Wars” spinoff has grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide, topping the U.S. box office every weekend since its release.
One thing was missing for “Star Wars” fans, however? The iconic crawl at the top of the film that explains what’s going on in a galaxy far, far away.
It was revealed the film wouldn’t have the yellow text at the beginning weeks before it came out, but as director Gareth Edwards recently revealed to Empire magazine, a crawl was actually a part of the original script.
“The first screenplay that Gary Whitta wrote had a crawl in it — and you learn doing that that ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’ has four dots in it, not three,” he told the magazine. “You get extra marks for that. And then at some point, probably like six months before we were filming, we were in a meeting, and they talked about not having an opening crawl because these are standalone films, not part of the sagas.”
Edwards said that at first, he felt a little weird about leaving the crawl out. “If I’m honest, there was an initial kind of like, ‘Whaaaa? I want the crawl!'” he said.
Instead, Edwards and his crew came up with something different.
“The opening sequence is kind of the crawl of our movie. It’s like the setup. And our film is also born out of a crawl — the reason we exist is because of a previous crawl, so it feels like this infinite loop that will never end. It’s a small thing to give up to get to do ‘Star Wars,'” he said.
Gareth Edwards Reveals Details On Rogue One
Via Empireonline.com:
Rogue One has officially landed. For the Empire Podcast Spoiler Special – available later this week – we spoke to director Gareth Edwards in forensic detail, and gleaned some heretofore hidden secrets from the first Star Wars standalone.
WARNING: Spoilers for Rogue One from the start.
1. Directing Rogue One was like going back to childhood
I was two when Star Wars came out. You grow up with Star Wars figures and AT-ATs and X-Wings, and that’s kind of what you’re promised the world is like. And then suddenly you realise actually it’s a massive lie, you realise life’s actually very boring. Everyone [asks] “wasn’t it crazy doing Star Wars?” And you go, “no actually, it was normal, it was what they advertised in the brochure when we were kids and it was life that was terribly worse”. And so getting to do Star Wars for two years was like going back to normal life, in a weird way. It’s like what you thought it was going to be when you were little.
2. Rogue One is the only Star Wars film Edwards wanted to direct
Honestly, I don’t know what they’re planning for the rest of the films, but I feel like if [I was] offered anything else, even the sagas, I would have been like, “no, I want to do Rogue One,” because that’s connected to the film that started me off wanting to do filmmaking, wanting to do everything.
3. There was a crawl in the script’s first draft
The first screenplay that Gary Whitta wrote had a crawl in it – and you learn doing that that ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’ has four dots in it, not three. You get extra marks for that. And then at some point, probably like six months before we were filming, we were in a meeting, and they talked about not having an opening crawl, because these are standalone films, not part of the sagas. And if I’m honest, there was an initial kind of like, “whaaaa? I want the crawl!” The opening sequence is kind of the crawl of our movie. It’s like the setup. And our film is also born out of a crawl – the reason we exist is because of a previous crawl, so it feels like this infinite loop that will never end. It’s a small thing to give up to get to do Star Wars.
Click below to read the full article.
Rogue One’s Editors On The Scenes Added In The Reshoots
Via uk.movies.yahoo.com:
Whatever way you look at it ‘Rogue One’, the first of Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ standalone movies directed by Gareth Edwards, has been a roaring success.
The fans love it, the critics love it (it’s at 85% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer), and it’s been a big hit at the box office too, but since its release it’s emerged that the film could have been very different if Disney hadn’t reshaped the movie between its principal shoot that ended in February 2016 and the much-discussed reshoots that happened in June last year.
You only have to watch the film’s trailers to see huge scenes that were initially shot but didn’t make it into the finished film.
Two of the film’s editors John Gilroy (editor of ‘Suicide Squad’/’Nightcrawler’/’Pacific Rim’ and brother of Tony Gilroy, the ‘Michael Clayton’ and ‘Bourne Legacy’ director brought in to oversee the reshoots) and Colin Goudie (editor of Edwards’ 2010 breakout ‘Monsters’) chatted with Yahoo Movies UK to discuss their roles on the movie, explain how the reshoots reshaped the movie, and share how some classic footage from ‘A New Hope’ made it into ‘Rogue One’ with help from the original actor who played Gold Leader.
Click below to read the full article.
Rogue One Reaches Another Box Office Milestone
Via Gamespot.com:
After reaching $500 million last week, Star Wars: Rogue One has now made more than $800 million worldwide. As reported by Empire, the sci-fi spinoff pulled in $801.9 million over its first 18 days following its release on December 16.
In the US, Rogue One has made $440 million, with international markets accounting for $361 million. The movie is scheduled to open in China, the world’s second-largest movie market, on January 13. The film is expected to cross $1 billion once it opens there.
By comparison, 2015’s The Force Awakens ended its theatrical run with $2.068 billion, making it the third highest-grossing movie in history. Only Titanic ($2.19 billion)and Avatar ($2.78 billion) made more money than The Force Awakens.
Disney had a massively successful 2016. The company’s movies collectively made more than $7 billion at the global box office during the year, which set a new industry record. Captain America: Civil War, Finding Dory, and Zootopia all made over $1 billion each, while The Jungle Book took in $966 million.
The next Star Wars movie is this December’s Episode VIII. That will be followed up by a Han Solo movie in 2018.
Trailer Moments That Were Nowhere To Be Found In Rogue One
Every New Ship and Vehicle from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
‘Rogue One’ Ends 2016 With A Bang
Via Forbes.com:
It took Rogue One: A Star Wars Story a sad and shameful 16 days to pass $400 million domestic. It took two days longer than The Avengers (Gah!), six days longer than Jurassic World (Eeek!), and it took twice as long as The Force Awakens (Aaaaahhhh!!!). Oh, and it snagged around $49m over its third Fri-Sun weekend, giving it the fifth-biggest third weekend of all time, behind Jurassic World ($54.4m), The Avengers ($55.6m), Avatar ($68.4m) and The Force Awakens ($90.24m). Yes, it’s starting to trail Avatar so the end is clearly nigh.
On a serious note, and in the realm of useless trivia, Walt Disney now owns 11 out of the top 20 biggest “third weekends.” The film dropped just 23% in its third weekend, which is way above the 39% third-weekend drop for The Force Awakens last year. Yes, Christmas and New Year’s fell on different days, and yes other “big” December releases held better over the last holiday weekend of the year, but that’s still a terrific hold when you’re dealing with numbers this large. The film will end today with over/under $425m domestic, leapfrogging to 14th on the all-time grossers list (sorry, Hunger Games: Catching Fire).
If it makes $63.5 million over the Fri-Mon holiday, we’re looking at a just under $440m 18-day cume, putting it just between E.T. ($435m) and Shrek 2 ($441m). And while it’s entirely possible that it’ll drop dead in the new year, there is no historical precedent for that save maybe The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. That Peter Jackson prequel trilogy finale earned $220 million by the end of its third weekend from a $90m Wed-Sun debut and then $255m total (it also earned $950m worldwide, so weep not for the Shire). Even that doomsday scenario gives the film a just-under $500m domestic total.
Anything leggier than that gives the film a real shot at $550 million domestic. As I noted yesterday, recent history paints a pretty rosy picture for Rogue One. Warner’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), 20th Century Fox’s Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011), Fox’s The Family Stone (2005) and Universal’s King Kong (2005) all earned between 19% (Kong) and 26% (Holmes and Chipmunks) of their business after the New Year’s holiday. Even I Am Legend (2007) earned 19% of its money after the New Year’s weekend.
So using those “Christmas fell on a Sunday” examples, we may be looking at around $550-$600 million domestic by the end. Yes, that may end up being hyperbole, as historical precedent isn’t a crystal ball into the future. But there is no evidence thus far that it’s playing like anything other than a well-liked and leggy “big” December release. We’ll know more tomorrow, but I can’t see a scenario at the moment where Rogue One doesn’t end up one of the very biggest domestic hits of all time and the biggest movie if the year worldwide.
Rogue One Filmmakers Address Choice To Bring Back Classic Characters
Via Independent.co.uk:
*WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY AHEAD*
If there was one great secret surrounding the release of the first of the planned Star Wars anthology films, it was the revelation Rogue One bore an even stronger connection to the franchise’s past than previously thought.
Rogue One, of course, follows a wayward band of Rebel fighters brought together for one improbable mission: steal the plans for the Death Star. These events, of course, directly link into the first scenes of A New Hope; when Princess Leia is seen concealing the plans in R2-D2 before she’s captured by the Galactic Empire.
What had been kept hidden, however, was that two iconic characters from A New Hope itself would actually be brought back through the magic of CGI: Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia.
Gareth Edwards defended the film’s risky manoeuvre in the Radio Times, stating: “We were talking about it, and you sort of lay out the movie, and as you start laying it you go, you know what, you’ve gotta have these certain characters in there, and I dunno how we’d do it. Like, what do we do? Do we cast someone who looks like them? Do we not have them? Do we just hear about them?”
He continued, “You know, to be honest, a lot of people were nervous the whole time, like, is this gonna happen? And then we went all or nothing in.”
“A lot of us got into the industry because of Star Wars, and we all have this love of the original source material,” John Knoll, the chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic and a visual effects supervisor on Rogue One told The New York Times; arguing that the CGI effects are, “in the spirit of what a lot of Star Wars has done in the past.”
“If he’s not in the movie, we’re going to have to explain why he’s not in the movie,” added Kiri Hart, a Lucasfilm story development executive and Rogue One co-producer. “This is kind of his thing.”
The effect was achieved by using English actor Guy Henry (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One and Two, Holby City) during principal photography, as he possesses a similar build and stature as Cushing’s, who passed away in 1994, and could speak in a similar manner.
Henry wore motion capture materials on his head, so that his face could eventually be replaced with a digital likeness of Cushing’s; though the team did have a back up plan in place in case things didn’t work out, either transferring lines to other characters or having Tarkin appear only in hologram communications.
Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic state the re-creation of Cushing was done entirely with the approval of the actor’s estate; though they were well aware of the potential ethical “slippery slope” involved in bringing back the dead through a digital likeness, Knoll doesn’t believe this has opened the door to the technique being abused in the future.
“I don’t imagine that happening,” Mr. Knoll said. “This was done for very solid and defendable story reasons. This is a character that is very important to telling this kind of story. It is extremely labour-intensive and expensive to do. I don’t imagine anybody engaging in this kind of thing in a casual manner.”
Knoll stressed the same importance when it came to re-creating Carrie Fisher (who passed away on 27 December)’s Princess Leia, by using actor Ingvild Deila and a digital likeness of Leia based on footage from A New Hope.
“To deliver on that moment of hopefulness, that is really underscored by the fact that you do get to see her face,” Hart stressed. “That’s the best possible use of effects, to enhance the meaning and the emotion of the experience for the viewer.”
