Rogue One: the latest news about the new Star Wars movie

Way back in 2012, Disney and Netflix signed an exclusivity agreement: starting in 2016, Netflix had the right to start streaming Disney films, including those from Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, in the same window when they would begin hitting television networks. Netflix has announced that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will begin streaming on Netflix in July 2017.

This is the first time US viewers will be able to catch a proper Star Wars film on Netflix. (Canadian viewers had access to The Force Awakens in 2016.) But the Star Wars franchise isn’t a stranger to Netflix by any stretch of the imagination: episodes of the Clone Wars series have been a regular fixture on the site, and Netflix debuted the sixth and final season of the series back in 2014.

With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s run in theaters soon coming to an end, Disney announced that the film will soon be available as a home release. The film will first be released in Digital HD on March 24th, with the DVD, Blu-ray, and on-demand options following on April 4th.

The home releases will include a variety of special features. There’s several character featurettes, the film’s actors talking about Jyn, Cassian, K-2SO, Baze & Chirrut, and Bodhi & Saw. There are also several behind-the-scenes features that look at the creation of Rogue One, the future of the franchise, and how the film connects to the larger Star Wars universe. What doesn’t appear to be included is deleted scenes (of which there are apparently many), nor any audio commentaries.

Spoilers ahead.

Regardless of how he’s marketed, Darth Vader is supposed to be a frightening character. The trouble is, unless you’ve dug deeper into Star Wars lore than the average fan, you’ve probably never seen why Vader is such a heart-stopping terror. Even when he’s Force choking Imperial peons or fighting his son, he’s holding something back. Which is why I’m still trying to pick my jaw off the floor after seeing a truly demonic Vader cut down Rebel fighters in Rogue One.

Rogue One, it seems, is a success. The Star Wars prequel opened to a massive $155 million opening weekend, the second-largest in December (only behind the nostalgia-fueled juggernaut that was 2015's The Force Awakens). There's going to be tons more to say about Rogue One, both as a standalone movie and as part of the overall Star Wars movie franchise going forward, but there’s one thing that makes it stand out among 2016’s biggest hits: it has an actual ending.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ROGUE ONE, BATMAN V. SUPERMAN, FANTASTIC BEASTS, AND OTHER 2016 FILMS FOLLOW

Ever since Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was first announced, fan expectations for the film have been high, but emotions have been complicated. This is the first Star Wars-related film that isn’t specifically part of the nine-episode franchise George Lucas pioneered back in 1977. It’s the first big-screen “side story” to take its own direction and its own narrative cues. Virtually all the characters are original to the movie, apart from a few old friends making minor appearances. It’s another prequel — a word with loaded connotations for a lot of old-school Star Wars fans — and it’s essentially a launch for Disney’s ambitious new plan to have some kind of Star Wars spinoff in theaters every year for as long as viewers will cooperate. A lot is riding on how fans react to the film, which is meant to kick off a Marvel Cinematic Universe-style era of Star Wars moviemaking. So how does the movie survive the hype, the expectations, and the prequel problem? In Question Club, we attempt to find the answers.

Warning: Rogue One spoilers ahead. Our spoiler-free review is here.

I’m going to hit you with spoilers right off the bat, so stop here if you haven’t seen Rogue One — but man, did that Vader / Krennic choking scene seem weirdly sexual to anyone? Or at least, like it was playing into an existing meme that has been relentlessly sexualized by the internet? And maybe like the writers were aware that it was doing so? And in being aware, like they were perhaps co-opting it into officially endorsed canon?

I should probably start from the beginning.

Rogue One is an unusual film to come from a massive film studio in 2016. While the rest of Hollywood is aping the Marvel method — creating movies that exist, in part, to establish spinoffs and sequels in never-ending fictional universes — Rogue One is shamelessly standalone. There won’t be a sequel.

Technically, Rogue One isn’t even part of the core Star Wars series. Disney is calling it a “Star Wars Story,” referring to a long-term plan to tell one-off stories set in the same galaxy as the traditional Star Wars films.

Darth Vader isn’t the supervillain he once was. There was a time when he symbolized evil of nightmarish, galactic proportions. With jet black armor and a fiery red lightsaber, he killed without remorse and stood by as an entire planet was annihilated. But these days, Vader is softened, more relatable. You might even call him safe. Cartoonist Jeffrey Brown has won awards for his books depicting the Sith Lord as a put-upon dad, and for certain young fans, he might be better known for his dance moves than for being the fist of the Empire.

As the steward of the Star Wars mythos, Walt Disney Studios has embraced Darth Vader’s cuddlier side, but under the surface, there’s still a dark heart of pure molten evil, one being explored in books and comics. It’s a balancing act that shouldn’t work: a science fantasy mass murderer who’s also being turned into teddy bears and Christmas ornaments. With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in theaters, fans are about to see Darth Vader’s grand return to the big screen, and our relationship with the character has never been more complicated. How long can Disney have Darth Vader both ways?

The sun had long since set when I pulled into a sleepy town at the edge of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. I had driven an hour through dense forests. Trees drooped from the first snow of the season over small homes and trailers that sparkled with bright Christmas lights. It was an unlikely place to pick up a replica helmet from a Star Wars movie I hadn’t even seen.

In the parking lot of the local supermarket, I met Jason. Tall, wearing a thick, hooded sweatshirt, and blond beard, he could have easily passed for a member of a local bike gang. But online, he’s gained a reputation among hardcore Star Wars fans and cosplay enthusiasts for his high-quality replica costumes. (Multiple people we talked to, including Jason, asked that we not print their last name due to a fear that Disney will put a stop to their activities.) We small-talked for a couple of minutes, and he handed me a plastic bag with the helmet. I’d been studying pictures of it online for months, but in the glow of the parking lot, finally holding it in my two hands left a grin plastered across my face.

When Disney bought Lucasfilm back in 2012, the studio made it clear that it wanted to get the most out of the $4.05 billion it was paying. Not only would there be a new trilogy of Star Wars films, but the studio also wanted a series of spinoffs: films that took place inside George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, but didn’t necessarily track the ongoing domestic squabbles of the Skywalker family. Essentially, the move was to Marvel-ize Star Wars, expanding one of the richest and most beloved properties in history to tell a never-ending stream of stories across all genres and forms of media.

Last year, J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens did its job, restoring the franchise to its position as an almighty cinematic behemoth. This weekend, it’s time for round two, with Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hitting theaters.

Remember when a boycott of Star Wars: The Force Awakens turned out to be mostly a trolling attempt, and a boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road wasn’t an organized boycott at all? Or when we realized that lots of tweets don’t necessarily equal a major social movement? I guess that lesson hasn’t sunk in yet, because Disney itself has now had to address a boycott of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Earlier today, The Hollywood Reporter asked Disney CEO Bob Iger about #DumpStarWars, an “alt-right” (reactionary white nationalist) “boycott” (hashtag) “campaign” (activity involving more than one person) that’s been brewing since not long after the election. Unlike the generic anti-diversity complaints against The Force Awakens, #DumpStarWars actually involves a specific political statement: it’s partly a reaction to Rogue One screenwriter Chris Weitz, who tweeted about implicit parallels between Star Wars villains and modern far-right politics. But Iger was still skeptical. “I think the whole story has been overblown and, quite frankly, it's silly,” he responded. “I have no reaction to [this] story at all.”

Rogue One, hitting theaters next week, is an experiment on the part of Lucasfilm to see if the Star Wars franchise can survive without having a Skywalker starring in a central role. Described as standalone films, they have the potential to tell different types of stories than the backbone films of the saga. But both Rogue One and the as-of-yet-untitled Han Solo film could also run into familiar problem: they’re prequels. And when it comes to prequels, Star Wars has history.

When George Lucas announced that he would be returning to the Star Wars universe with 1999’s Episode I: The Phantom Menace, fans were ecstatic to finally learn how the galaxy got to the the first Star Wars film, 1977’s A New Hope. While The Phantom Menace was highly anticipated, hope vanished as soon as moviegoers left theaters. Critics have since highlighted the many things wrong with the film and its sequels Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith: George Lucas’s reliance on special effects, the wooden performances of his actors, and a general inability to recapture the used-universe appeal and special effects novelty that was the original trilogy. But the biggest problem may have been the burden of the prequel itself: the movies told a story to which everyone already knew the ending, and ended up feeling as though they existed to explain and justify the original trilogy, rather than tell a story of their own.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story comes out next week, and unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that the movie involves the theft of the plans for the Death Star. There's also a chance that you've wondered if this movie will finally explain what a Bothan is, and why many of them died to bring you this information.

But we here at The Verge would like to correct this misconception. Rogue One details the story of Jyn Erso and her band of Bothan-less misfits stealing the plans to the first Death Star, sometime before Episode IV: A New Hope. Said plans go on to make their way to Princess Leia Organa, who smuggles them to the Rebel Alliance, where they are analyzed to reveal the crucial flaw of the thermal exhaust port that is later used to (spoilers) blow up the Death Star. But it is crucial to note that — as far as we are currently aware — there are no Bothans in this film (dead or otherwise).

This post contains minor plot spoilers for the beginning 30 minutes of Rogue One.

Standing before a crowd of journalists in a private movie theater at Skywalker Ranch this past weekend, Gareth Edwards made an appeal to the hardcore fans. “I feel like I’m standing on sacred ground,” he told the audience. Edwards, the director of the upcoming Star Wars standalone film Rogue One, knows the significance of his position. He’s only the second director, after J.J. Abrams, to helm a Star Wars movie since creator George Lucas sold the franchise to Disney in 2012.  

During a press conference today at Lucasfilm’s San Francisco campus, the cast and crew of Rogue One answered questions about the upcoming film. During the Q&A, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was asked about her earlier remarks about female directors — and pushed back on the idea that the company was excluding female directors.

“We have every intention of giving someone an opportunity,” Kennedy said, arguing that her original remarks were taken out of context. The company’s requirements, she said, are only that a filmmaker show an interest in the Star Wars property, and that they have some degree of experience directing bigger-budgeted movies. When asked at the press conference, she noted that while she had spoken to a number of female directors working in the industry, none have been brought onboard yet.

With a little more than two weeks left before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters, Twitter has hopped onto the film’s promotional bandwagon. Recode reports that Twitter and Disney have announced plans to live stream a Q&A with the movie’s cast, including Felicity Jones and Diego Luna, later this week from a “surprise location,” as well as “never before seen content” from the movie.

The stream will air for an hour starting this Friday at 1PM ET. It’s not clear what content the two companies will show off, but the stream will be available to fans with and without Twitter accounts online and on the official Twitter apps for Apple TV, Fire TV, and Xbox.

Disney has released a new trailer — titled Trust — for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, signaling that we’re finally in the home stretch before the next installment of the franchise hits theaters.

The new trailer shows off a mix of footage that we’ve seen in the most recent international trailer, as well as a couple of of new moments that makes it look as though Alan Tudyk’s K-S20 will steal the show and inject a bit of humor into the film.

Prepare your stormtrooper suits and break out your lightsabers: tickets for the first Star Wars spin-off movie, Rogue One, will go on sale next Monday. The date was revealed by the official Star Wars Twitter account on Thanksgiving night, giving fans two-and-a-half weeks to build up anticipation after buying their tickets, before the movie's premiere on December 16th.

The Star Wars account didn't specify exactly what time tickets will become available, but chances are you might be online early anyway — November 28th is Cyber Monday, when retailers roll out a whole new slate of deals on computers, phones, and other electronics.

With Star Wars: Rogue One just around the corner, fans are beginning to wonder how the Galaxy Far, Far Away translates from the era of The Revenge of the Sith to that of A New Hope. Rogue One takes place just before the events of that first film, and will introduce viewers to an entirely new cast of characters. To help set the stage for the film, Lucasfilm turned to veteran Star Wars author James Luceno to write Catalyst, the first novel that will tie in to the events of Rogue One.

Catalyst takes place shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith. The Empire has begun work on a massive project known as the Death Star in order to assert its control over the galaxy; one of the leaders of the project, Orson Krennic, recruits an old friend, Galen Erso, to help with its completion. While Erso believes that his work will be used to help people, Krennic has other ideas, and the scientist unwittingly finds himself a pawn in a much larger conflict.

An international trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has hit the web, giving us our best look yet at the franchise’s iconic villain, while also providing a bit more of a glimpse into Jyn Erso’s backstory.

The new trailer includes new footage from the upcoming film, giving us some additional details about the Erso family, from their separation to Jyn's desire to try and find her father as they're working to locate the plans for the space station.

Rogue One already has a teaser and a regular trailer, but the latest (and apparently final) trailer contains a lot of additional new footage. Which is to say it’s stuffed with more clues and hints to obsess over while we wait impatiently for December. Like with the regular trailer, let’s dig in and see what it reveals.

Be warned, though this is speculation, there are likely some spoilers ahead.

A new trailer for Disney’s standalone Star Wars film Rogue One has hit the web, and it shows off a glimpse of Jyn Erso's past, the origins of the Rogue call sign, and some intense battle scenes.

There are some intriguing clues here: it opens with Imperial forces advancing on a farm, while Galen Erso comforts his young daughter, telling her that he's doing "it to protect her," before an adult Jyn wakes up in a prison cell. The trailer also shows off Alliance forces breaking her out, while Director Orson Krennic talks about the power that the battle station gives the Empire.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens may have been a box-office and cultural phenomenon of face-melting proportions, but Disney doesn’t think anybody should get too excited for a repeat when Rogue One hits theaters later this year. Variety reports that Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger discussed the new entry in the franchise at a Goldman Sachs conference on Wednesday, telling investors that "We never felt it would do the level that Force Awakens did," although he did tout that "the level of interest is as high as it was for Force Awakens."

The new film, which focuses on the group that steals the Death Star plans at the heart of the 1977 original, has had a tough go of it in the last few months. Director Gareth Edwards first articulated his gritty, Saving Private Ryan-inspired vision two years ago at the Star Wars Celebration convention, a take that excited the audience in attendance because it was such a departure from what had come before. But with the film undergoing extensive reshoots this summer — and filmmaker Tony Gilroy reportedly stepping in to lend a hand — many have taken the changes as a sign that Disney was unhappy with the dour tone, and hoped to lighten the film up a bit. (Screenwriter Gary Whitta, who wrote the first draft of Rogue One, has called the insinuations "bullshit.")

The composer for the first ever standalone Star Wars film, Rogue One, has been replaced just three months before release. According to The Hollywood Reporter, original pick Alexandre Desplat has been dropped, and Pixar-composer Michael Giacchino is in. THR notes that this isn't to do with any artistic squabbling, but simply due to the extensive reshoots of Rogue One, tweaking its story and tone. These changes in schedule have had a knock-on effect on the timetable for scoring the film, and Desplat was reportedly unavailable for the new dates.

Enter Giacchino, a long-time friend of J.J. Abrams, and the man behind soundtracks for films including Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Up, Inside Out, Zootopia, and all three of the recent Star Trek films. (Desplat, of course, has his own notable history, including compositions for The Grand Budapest Hotel and Godzilla.) With Giacchino's storied history, Rogue One is certainly in safe hands, although this will still be the first Star Wars film not to be scored by the legendary composer John Williams. Star Wars: Rogue One will hit theaters in the US December 14th.