Here’s The First Photo And Finalised Cast Of ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’
YAY.
The very far away — but obviously much anticipated — Star Wars: Rogue One threw the franchise’s anxious fans a bone over the weekend and announced the finalised cast and crew at Disney’s D23 Expo live-action panel. Sidestepping Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ looming shadow, the company revealed TV favourites Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal) and Alan Tudyk (Firefly) will star in the Gareth Edwards’ directed spin-off, with Tudyk apparently utilising his digital character experience from I, Robot to play a “performance-capture” creature (R2-D2?!?), as well as our own Ben Mendelsohn — we got an Australian in, you guys!
The rest of the cast includes Riz Ahmed, Diego Luna, Felicity Jones, Jiang Wen, Donnie Yen and Forest Whitaker, but, sadly, no Munchkin the shih tzu (sorry everyone).
The very first press photo was also released, and it features a woman front and centre (but, much like Abbott’s deliberately placed camera angles during Question Time, it’s not an accurate representation of the gender ratio), and shows off the welcome racial diversity within the Rogue One cast.
Rogue One, which is Edwards’ third film after last year’s Godzilla, takes place before A New Hope and deviates away from the saga films [anxiety increases], without totally abandoning key Star Wars elements [anxiety slightly alleviates]. It tells the story of a group of united resistance fighters planning to hijack the infinitely problematic Death Star. “It goes into new territory, exploring the galactic struggle from a ground-war perspective while maintaining that essential Star Wars feel that fans have come to know,” said the film’s producer Kathleen Kennedy. Good, okay, everything seems to be in order here, carry on.
Star Wars: Rogue One is set to release on December 16th, 2016.