“Rogue One” director Gareth Edwards recently told Business Insider that he would never make another “Star Wars” movie again, adding: “I’m very happy to move on and do my thing.”
Starring Felicity Jones and Diego Luna, “Rogue One” was the first “Star Wars” spinoff movie and centered on a group of rebels on a mission to steal the plans for the Death Star. The ensemble cast included Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk and Forest Whitaker. While “Rogue One” was acclaimed by critics and fans upon its release in 2016 (it grossed more than $1 billion worldwide), its reputation has only gone up amid the adoration for its Disney+ prequel series “Andor.”
“I don’t agree with it, but I appreciate it,” Edwards said when “Rogue One” was cited as the best “Star Wars” movie of the Disney era. “I’m very grateful that people say nice things.”
“What you have to keep in your pocket as you go through making other films, is that it’s not about how people feel the day it gets released, it’s how people feel about it 10, 20 years from now,” Edwards said added about “Rogue One” hitting its 10th anniversary next year. “When you make a movie, you’re living at least a year from now, you’re trying to imagine what it’s like, all these decisions you’re making, what they are going to be like a year from now when this movie is released, what’s the audience going to think? And as the movie comes out, you go, ‘I’m going to pretend I’m living 10 years from now, and it doesn’t matter what people say in the moment.’ It’s the kid who comes up to you 20 years from now and goes, ‘Oh my god, I loved that movie!’ I think that’s the reward.”
The production of “Rogue One” became infamous as reports circulated that Lucasfilm sidelined Edwards and brought in Tony Gilroy (who went on to create “Andor”) to write new dialogue and direct additional scenes. Edwards told KCRW’s “The Business” in 2023 that “there is so much inaccuracy” surrounding the making of his “Star Wars” prequel.
“The stuff that’s out there on the internet about what happened on that film — there is so much inaccuracy about the whole thing,” Edwards said. “Tony [Gilroy] came in, and he did a lot of great work, for sure. No doubt about it. But we all worked together until the entire last minute of that movie.”
When Variety asked Edwards about the “Rogue One” reports around the same time, the director responded, “Look, the only thing I can say is I was incredibly lucky.”
“I got to make a ‘Star Wars’ film. I won the lottery, in that sense,” he continued. “The idea of someone as privileged as me in any way implying that it was anything other than the amazing experience that it was to some extent — like, I don’t have any empathy for that person, and I don’t want to be that person either.”
Edwards is now the director of “Jurassic World Rebirth,” opening in theaters July 2 from Universal Pictures.
