As Rogue One reaches its half decade anniversary, John Knoll sat down with ILM’s Publicity Group to discuss his involvement in the production, the genesis of his idea that eventually became Rogue One and the incredible leaps ILM made to bring the story to the big screen to such incredibly impressive effect.
ILM: John, the whole idea of Rogue One started with you. How long back had you been thinking of this idea before it was greenlit?
JK: I started thinking about this all the way back on Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. I was on set when we were shooting in Sydney, and I think we were waiting for some set-up to happen. I started chatting to Rick McCallum who was producing the film, and he mentioned that he and George Lucas were developing a Star Wars live-action TV series, and that they were working on scripts. I started thinking about all of the interesting tales you could tell in a show like that, and one of the first things that popped into my head was, “what about a Mission: Impossible-style operation to break into the most secure facility that the Galactic Empire had to steal the plans for the Death Star?” I started toying with that idea, along with a few others, and I approached Rick again to learn more about the time period they wanted to set the show in, and I realized that none of my ideas would apply to that period, so I shelved it.
ILM: When did it pick back up again?
JK: Well, flash-forward to 2012 after Lucasfilm’s acquisition by The Walt Disney Company, where George selected Kathleen Kennedy to lead Lucasfilm, and our announcement of the continuation of the Skywalker Saga. What we also announced then that I was really intrigued by were the spinoff films. The first one we announced internally was Solo, and I got so excited about where these spinoff films could go, because the possibilities were endless. As a bit of a joke, I started pitching an updated version of my story that went, “picture a SEAL Team Six in the Star Wars universe, and they’re going on this desperate, high-stakes mission to break into the most secure facility in the Galactic Empire to steal the plans for the Death Star. What about that?” People would go “oh… actually, that sounds pretty cool…” [Laughs].
The next couple of weeks will see new episodes of Making Tracks bring you interviews with three Rogue One creatives; Guy Henry, the man behind Grand Moff Tarkin, puppeteer Brian Herring and Creature Shop supremo Neal Scanlan, and in 2022 Fantha Tracks will be sitting down once again with director Gareth Edwards to discuss his latest film True Love and of course Rogue One.
