Amongst the plethora of things that the Star Wars films are known for, the opening crawl, explaining the events taking place prior to the movie, is among the most iconic. But the franchise’s first spin-off film (not counting the made for TV Ewok films), Rogue One, may not open with the crawl. Speaking with ET during the past weekend’s Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilms president Kathleen Kennedy had this to say about it:
“You know, we’re in the midst of talking about it, but I don’t think these films will have an opening crawl. I think that’s what we kind of telegraphed at the beginning of the event today.”
Director Gareth Edwards was a bit more vague about the subject:
“I think basically there’s a lot of things that I probably can’t talk about, is probably the safest way to answer that. The idea is this film is supposed to be different than the saga films…the whole crawl of it all — it’s funny people are fascinated on that.”
It appears they are doing what they can to differentiate the stand alone films from the main Star Wars films. We’ll find out for certain when Rogue One is released on December 16, 2016.