Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is getting a brand new trailer on Thursday (or Friday for those of us on the European side of the pond) – and in the run-up to that its director Gareth Edwards has dropped some new information on his Star Wars spin-off.
More specifically, he’s been chatting to EW about the mysterious desert planet Jedha, where much of the film is set, and is apparently something of a holy land for followers of the Force.
“The Force is basically in Star Wars like a religion, and they’re losing their faith in the period that we start the movie,” Edwards told EW. “We were trying to find a physical location we could go to that would speak to the themes of losing your faith and the choice between letting the Empire win, or evil win, and good prevailing,” he says. “It got embodied in this place we called Jedha.”
With its Middle-Eastern look and feel, Mecca and Jerusalem are obvious influences. “It’s a place where people who believe in the Force would go on a pilgrimage,” Edwards says. “It was essentially taken over by the Empire. It’s an occupied territory… There’s something very important in Jedha that serves both the Jedi and the Empire. It felt very much like something we could relate to in the real world.”
We’ll soon learn more when the new Rogue One trailer arrives during NBC’s Olympic coverage on Thursday night in the US and Friday morning here in Blighty. The film itself arrives into cinemas in December – read our complete guide to what we know so far.