One of the Planets in ‘Rogue One’ Got Its Name from a Coffee Cup Misspelling
Gareth Edwards pretty much lived the dream moviemaking experience when he directed last year’s Rogue One: He got to be a part of a franchise he’d loved since he was a kid, but he also got to contribute his own ideas to an almost entirely original story within that franchise instead of being bound by the confines of an already-established plotline. At SXSW on Monday, Edwards delivered a keynote speech about his work in Star Wars and becoming a filmmaker, and revealed that one of the planets in Rogue One got its name from a fortuitous misspelling at a coffee shop.
He shared a few funny behind-the-scenes stories from the film (via The Hollywood Reporter) including how Scarif — the planet whose ground and skies ended up being the site of that final battle sequence — got its name from a barista who misspelled Edwards’ first name on a coffee cup. “I must have said, ‘It’s Gareth,’ and they wrote ‘Scarif,’” he said.
He also said that he’d written a cameo for himself in the movie as one of the Rebel Alliance soldiers in that big Darth Vader sequence at the end of the movie who allows Leia’s ship to escape from the Empire’s forces. “Never ever, ever listen to anybody who tells you something is impossible,” he told the crowd. “Because if you never give up, you sometimes can join the Rebel Alliance and help blow up the Death Star.”
He also held a Reddit AMA in which he revealed, among other tidbits, that Rogue One did originally have an opening crawl in one of the first versions of the script: “Gary Whitta actually wrote one in the first draft. You’ll have to pester him for it ;) ... I do believe that those opening crawl words are actually floating out there in space somewhere.” While Edwards didn’t explain why it was ultimately removed, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said months ago that Rogue One was crawl-less to set it apart from other movies in the Star Wars series. And seeing as the entire plot of the movie was taken from the opening crawl of another movie, trying to explain the situation over again might have been a little redundant.