All the Juicy Details We Have About Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Ben Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelsen, and Alan Tudyk are just some of the familiar faces we'll see onscreen. Jones plays Jyn Erso, an outlaw who is given the opportunity to clear her name by agreeing to help the Rebellion with a special mission to take down the Empire. Tudyk is known for his voice work in movies like I, Robot and Frozen, so it makes sense that he's providing the voice for a droid. Mendelsohn has already been established as the villain, and Mads Mikkelsen is playing Jyn's scientist father, who is wanted by both the Rebellion and the Empire for his knowledge (which Mikkelsen dropped a hint about in an interview). Check out the entire list!

Disney apparently thinks the Force is strong with Gareth Edwards, who is the lucky director at the helm of Rogue One. Given his sci-fi experience with the 2014 blockbuster Godzilla and 2010's alien invasion movie Monsters, hopefully the spinoff is in good hands.

As far as timelines go, the film takes place sometime between Episode III and Episode IV, around the time of the events in A New Hope.

The basic plot centers on a group of Rebels whose mission is to steal the plans for the first Death Star from the Empire so that Luke Skywalker can later destroy it. The ragtag heroes are then pursued by a deadly force of bounty hunters, dispatched by Darth Vader and the movie's other big villain, Director Orson Krennic.

Rogue One hosts a pretty massive cast, and the trailer was kind enough to give us a few quick glimpses at everyone. Luckily Entertainment Weekly got their hands on some key traits about a few of the biggest characters:

Jyn Erso: Lucasfilm president and Rogue One producer Kathleen Kennedy describes Jyn (Felicity Jones) as having "a checkered past," and that she's been detained by the rebellion. "She is being given an opportunity to be useful. And by being useful, it may commute her sentence. . .she’s a real survivor. She becomes a kind of Joan of Arc in the story."
Captain Cassian Andor: Played by Diego Luna, Captain Andor will be a tough Rebel intelligence officer with no patience for rule breaking. "He conveys a fair amount of experience and the reality of what it’s like to do this every day, to try to figure out how to resist the Empire effectively and intelligently,” Kiri Hart, Lucasfilm’s chief of story development, revealed. “It’s not easy."
Chirrut Imwe: Donnie Yen will step into the shoes of blind warrior monk Chirrut, who hopes to continue the Jedi message without actually being one. "This idea that magical beings are going to come and save us is going away, and it’s up to normal, everyday people to take a stand to stop evil from dominating the world," said director Gareth Edwards.
Baze Malbus: "He understands Chirrut’s spiritual centeredness, but he doesn’t necessarily support it,” Kennedy said of Baze (Jiang Wen), who is close with Chirrut, but doesn't share his ideals.
K-2SO: Ready for some competition, BB-8? Alan Tudyk will voice the large, confident security droid, who Edwards says is "the antithesis of C-3PO," and that he's "a little bit like Chewbacca's personality in a droid’s body."
Galen Erso: Mads Mikkelsen had previously dropped a few hints about his character, and now we have confirmation. Not only is Galen Jyn's estranged father, but he's also a scientist wanted by both the Empire and the Rebellion thanks to highly sensitive knowledge he has that could potentially destroy the world. "He’s one of those people that has insight into you know specific aspects of just how the universe works," Hart told the magazine.
Director Orson Krennic: Ben Mendelsohn is the film's primary baddie, with an army of Deathtroopers at his disposal to help squash the Rebellion. "The bad guy is a lot more terrifying when he’s really smart, and really effective,” says John Knoll, who worked on the story for Rogue One. “There is a lot of palace intrigue going on in the Empire, with people conspiring to move up the ranks and sabotaging each other. There’s not a lot of loyalty there."

Actor Ben Mendelsohn, who you might recognize from Netflix's Bloodline, is crossing to the Dark Side for Rogue One. Mendelsohn will be playing the highly ambitious Director Orson Krennic, an Imperial officer in the First Galactic Empire who is eager to impress the Emperor by any means necessary. Although his position within the Empire forces him to interact and cooperate with Darth Vader, they're not exactly friends.

“There is a lot of palace intrigue going on in the Empire, with people conspiring to move up the ranks and sabotaging each other,” producer John Knoll told EW. “There’s not a lot of loyalty there.” This competition is what presumably has Krennic so fired up to find and destroy Jyn Erso and the rest of the Rebel team tasked with taking down the Empire's Death Star. If his character has any shred of the intensity General Hux does in The Force Awakens, we'll be in for a real treat.

There were some conflicting reports on this topic, but it's finally been confirmed that Darth Vader will have a very important — albeit small — role in the film. You can see brief looks at him in the recently released trailers, and "He will be in the movie sparingly," Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told Entertainment Weekly. “But at a key, strategic moment, he’s going to loom large.” Kennedy also let slip that James Earl Jones, 85, will once again provide Vader's menacing voice, adding a sense of authenticity to the project.

The EW article additionally revealed that Rogue One is taking place around 19 years after Revenge of the Sith, which ended with Anakin Skywalker losing his limbs and nearly being burned to death after fighting Obi-Wan, leading to his choice to put on the life-saving black armor his character is known for. At this point, Vader has yet to rise to the level of infamy he has in A New Hope, but is instead functioning as more of the Emperor's brutal enforcer, someone who the Rebels aren't completely aware of.

“Vader doesn’t really play by the rules," Lucasfilm’s chief of story development, Kiri Hart, told the magazine. “He’s present in the military structure, but he’s not beholden to it. He’s not accountable to anybody, really, except Palpatine.” Whether or not this iconic villain will have any face-to-face action with the protagonists is still unconfirmed, though we do know that he will have some scenes with Director Krennic.

During an interview with Edwards, the director hinted that Princess Leia might make an appearance (how they'll do that is another story), seemingly corroborated by a video clip showing her adopted father, Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits). Smits plays Organa in Episodes II and III, saving baby Leia at the end of Revenge of the Sith after her real dad, Anakin Skywalker, turns to the Dark Side. When Leia grows up to be a member of the Rebellion herself, she transmits the Death Star plans to Luke via R2D2 in A New Hope, which we now know are stolen by Jyn and her crew.

The Force is sadly not with this movie. Since Rogue One will deal more with the uprising of the rebellion, and where Jones's character fits into that, this will be the first film in the Star Wars franchise that doesn't feature a storyline revolving around Jedi.

If you're a Boba Fett fan, get ready for plenty of action from everyone's favorite Sarlacc snack. Bloody Disgusting claims that a collection of iconic bounty hunters (including Cad Bane from the Clone Wars animated TV series), will team up to take down Felicity Jones and Co. Since Rogue One was rumored to be a bounty hunter movie in the first place, this information totally makes sense. The full quote is below:

Since there hasn't been any sign of Boba Fett in the trailers, it's wise to take this information with a grain of salt. Then again, an unexpected appearance from the character would be a welcome surprise.

When news that Rogue One had screened for test audiences with poor results and was being forced to undergo reshoots this summer, the internet started having a mild panic attack. Thankfully Edwards assured EW that everything had just been blown out of proportion. "I mean it was always part of the plan to do reshoots," he said. "We always knew we were coming back somewhere to do stuff. We just didn’t know what it would be until we started sculpting the film in the edit." Kathleen Kennedy ehoed his sentiments, saying, "There’s nothing about the story that’s changing, with a few things that we’re picking up in additional photography. I think that’s the most important thing, to reassure fans that it’s the movie we intended to make."

Just in time for you to ask your parents for fresh new lightsaber for Christmas, the movie will hit theaters on Dec. 16.

This is just one of many trailers that Disney has released, so check out the rest here.

Disney unveiled this in October, two months before the film's release.