When one thinks of “Star Wars,” chances are they think of Lucasfilm, and of course, Disney. “Star Was” has long since abandoned its indie roots of the 1970s, and is now the property of one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates the world has ever seen. As such, one can expect that getting ideas through this behemoth is quite a task. With all the inherent bureaucracy, ideas for new “Star Wars” flicks likely have to go through some sort of gauntlet before they’re approved, right? Perhaps. But in the case of “Rogue One,” the first anthology film from the franchise, that definitely wasn’t the case. 

In a recent piece from Wired, the outlet revealed the origins of “Rogue One.”

The idea came from John Knoll, the chief creative officer at Lucasfilm, who worked on the “Special Edition” versions of everyone’s favorite trilogy. This isn’t his only qualification, however. The man also co-created the gold standard photo editing tool Photoshop. It was a few years ago, and Kathleen Kennedy had just taken over as the head of Lucasfilm, and though the announcement may not have been public yet, it was very clear internally that “Star Wars” was about to come back in a big, bad way. Knoll walked into Kennedy’s office and said the following:

“I just have this very simple idea about the rebel spies in the opening crawl of A New Hope who steal the plans for the Death Star.”

The idea was simple. He wanted to make a movie about that illustrious crew who stole those plans for the Rebels. “The plans are the MacGuffin, the thing everyone is chasing. The spies? No one mentions them again.”

Kennedy’s response was short and sweet.

“That is a very good idea, John.”

The film was green lit for development and the rest is history. Now, “Rogue One” is a short year away from its release, and will mark the first time the “Star Wars” films will venture away from the main backbone of the story, which follows the Skywalker clan over (what’s now) three generations.

What’s more is that “Rogue One” is the start of making “Star Wars” a never-ending franchise. The number of things that can happen in a galaxy far, far away is limitless, and so long as people keep buying tickets, Disney will likely keep producing them. Adam Rogers over at Wired put it quite depressingly accurate in the title of the aforementioned Wired article: “You won’t live to see the final ‘Star Wars’ movie.”

What do you think of “Rogue One” and its origins? Let us know in the comments down below!

SOURCE: Wired