The mighty Death Star returns in this trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

By Rick Marshall Published December 29, 2017

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is still in some theaters, but now we have our first look at the next chapter in the Star Wars saga via the first official trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm revealed the Rogue One debut trailer during today’s episode of Good Morning America, and the preview offers a peek at the first installment of a series of standalone spinoff films set within the Star Wars universe.

Recommended Videos

Directed by Monsters and Godzilla filmmaker Gareth Edwards, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story unfolds in the period between the events of prequel film Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and the franchise-starting 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. The film follows a group of rebel agents who are tasked with a seemingly impossible (and likely suicidal) mission: stealing the plans to the Empire’s deadly new weapon, the Death Star.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Oscar-nominated The Theory of Everything actress Felicity Jones features prominently in the trailer as a rebellious woman recruited for the dangerous mission who clearly has some demons of her own to confront along the way. She’s joined in the cast by Diego Luna (Milk), Ben Mendelsohn (Bloodline), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal), and Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler). Firefly actor Alan Tudyk also provides the motion-capture performance for one of the featured characters in the film.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story features a script penned by About a Boy and The Golden Compass screenwriter Chris Weitz, based on a story conceived by Star Wars franchise veteran John Knoll (who also serves as an executive producer on the film) and The Book of Eli and The Walking Dead: The Game writer Gary Whitta. Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The King’s Speech) will provide the film’s score.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is scheduled to hit theaters December 16, 2016.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…

Entertainment

Josh Gad had to explain the Star Wars sequels to Mel Brooks while pitching Space Balls 2

Luke Skywalker with a blue lightsaber at the climax of The Last Jedi.

Space Balls has long been one of Mel Brooks's most beloved films, in large part because it lovingly parodies the Star Wars universe. In fact, that film has become so beloved in and of itself that a sequel is in the works from actor Josh Gad, who co-wrote the sequel script with Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit.

In a recent interview on Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, Josh discussed development for the new film and explained that he had to do a lot of explaining for the 98-year-old comic legend. When Space Balls was released in 1987, the original trilogy was just a few years old, and in the years since, there have been eight new Star Wars movies that Gad had to walk through.

Entertainment

Andor cost how much? Disney+ show is most expensive Star Wars project ever

Cassian riding off with Luthen on a speeder in Andor.

Andor is one of the best Star Wars projects ever created by Lucasfilm. It also carries a hefty price tag.

According to a report from Forbes, Disney has spent $645 million to make Andor, including over $290 million on season 2 alone. That is the new record price for a Star Wars project, passing the $400-million-plus budget on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Entertainment

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew was originally supposed to be a movie

Jude Law sits in a starship's pilot seat in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.

Lucasfilm is on the verge of debuting its second live-action Star Wars series of the year, Skeleton Crew. Set after the events of Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, the show follows a group of adventure-seeking kids who end up stranded in space with a starship of unknown origin and are joined on their journey home by a mysterious, potentially untrustworthy adult Force-user (Jude Law). The new series comes from the minds of Christopher Ford and Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts, and it has the potential to be the Disney+ hit that Lucasfilm has been in desperate need of over the past two years.

As well-suited as it may seem for the studio's Disney+ model, though, Skeleton Crew was originally pitched to Lucasfilm years ago as a movie, Watts recently revealed. "I pitched it right after the first Spider-Man [Homecoming] movie. It was initially pitched to Lucasfilm as a film, and then I had to go make two Spider-Man movies, because the first one did all right," the filmmaker told TVLine. "Over time, [Jon] Favreau made The Mandalorian and Disney+ came into existence, so it evolved, as the Spider-Man movies were being made, into a show."