First ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’ Photo Reveals New Cast Members - Update

quote:

---

Disney has just released a first look at the cast of Star Wars: Rogue One, Gareth Edwards‘ upcoming spinoff film about a group of resistance fighters who have united to steal plans to the dreaded Death Star, and there’s quite a bit to break down.

Not quite as forceful, and for shorthand, we’ll still refer to this as “Star Wars: Rogue One” or just “Rogue One” since Rogue One: A Star Wars Story sounds like a bedtime book.

Moving on, we also have some new and exciting additions to the cast. We previously reported that the cast included Felicity Jones, Riz Ahmed, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, and Forest Whitaker. Disney has now announced that the cast will also include Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly), Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal), and Alan Tudyk (Firefly), who will be playing a performance-capture character.

From a talent and racial diversity perspective, this cast is fantastic, and I can’t wait to see what they do together. But if it has a major problem, it’s the same one that The Force Awakens had when it announced its cast: painfully short on female roles. Granted, based on this image and the order of announcing the cast, it sounds like Jones’ character is the lead of this ensemble, but that’s still just one female role and it’s 2015. That’s ridiculous. Hopefully there will be some more additions similar to how Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie were announced after the big cast photo was revealed for Force Awakens.

---

quote:

---

The Daily Mail is reporting that Peter Cushing, who played Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, will be digitally resurrected for the upcoming spinoff, Rogue One. For those that don’t know, the plot of Rogue One is about a group of resistance fighters who unite to steal the plans for the Death Star.

It makes sense for Tarkin to be a key character since he’s instrumental in the building of the Death Star, and a source tells the Mail, “This is one of the most complex and costly CGI re-creations ever. Cushing is a pivotal plot line as he was the one to create Darth Vader and there’s a whole back story that will come out.” If this is true, that means Darth Vader is probably coming back, but it’s a whole lot easier to put him into the new movies than it is for Cushing, who died of prostate cancer in 1994.

---