Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Discover how you make a science-fiction movie that’s in touch with its past, as trevor Hogg talks to ILM’s John Knoll.

- John Knoll

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story marks the start of a series of movies that explore the origins and back stories of various historical events and characters that are part of the cinematic universe conceived by George Lucas.“As far as I know I’m credited as executive producer, story by, and visual effects supervisor on the movie,” says ILM’s chief creative officer and VFX supervisor John Knoll, who took part in discussions about story, design, costumes and casting for the project based on his idea. “It began informally in the company after the new slate of Star Wars films was announced.

There were Episodes VII, VIII and IX which continue the Skywalker saga, but intriguing to a lot of us was this idea of doing films that are in the Star Wars universe, but weren’t part of that through line. They could be their own self-contained, standalone stories that don’t have to have any characters in common. One of them announced was the Han Solo story which is a wonderful opportunity to find out who this mysterious character that we meet in Episode IV is, and find out how he became the person we see there.

“I wanted to do some adventures with characters who we don’t know, so I pitched informally to friends this idea of the rebel spy mission to steal the Death Star plans. I got these enthusiastic responses back when I would do this little 30-second version of it. ‘Imagine this.’ Encouraged by that, I started to get a little more elaborate with each telling.”

Many, many stars