Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has revealed he thought it was "a clerical error" when he was asked about directing the eagerly awaited Star Wars spin-off movie.
The British filmmaker had just completed work on 2014's Godzilla when Star Wars maker Disney Lucasfilm contacted him about Rogue One, which is released in Irish cinemas on December 15.
"I suspect it was a clerical error and they meant to email someone else," Edwards said during a live-streamed Q&A on Twitter from Lucasfilm's visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco.
"I had just finished a big film and was exhausted. I just wanted to have a holiday but I went to Lucasfilm and was not good at auditioning.
"But I got home and was sent an idea and realised it was connecting to [original Star Wars film] A New Hope, my favourite movie of all time."
Edwards admitted that his initial response was 'this is sacrilegious, you can't do this', but he later "begged" to go behind the lens.
"It is so surreal to make Star Wars," he continued.
"I couldn't sit in the cinema knowing I had the chance to do it but someone else did."
Rogue One is set before the events in the original Star Wars movie and tells the story of a band of Rebel fighters tasked with stealing the plans for the Death Star. It stars Inferno's Felicity Jones alongside Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, Hannibal's Mads Mikkelsen, Y tu mamá también's Diego Luna and Bloodline's Ben Mendelsohn.
There was much concern among fans over the summer months after reports of re-shoots on Rogue One. Both Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy and star Jones discussed the re-shoots in an interview with trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter in October.
"I'm sure if you picked up the phone and called every single large, technical movie and said, 'You ever gone in and done reshoots?' they'd all say, 'Oh God, yes,'" said Kennedy.
"So why has it turned into a big story? Because it's Star Wars, and they put a spotlight and scrutinise every single thing that gets done. But it was always planned and nothing unusual."
"Obviously when you come to the edit, you see the film come together and you think, 'Actually, we could do this better, and this would make more sense if we did this,'" added Jones.
"I've done it so many times. I mean, you wouldn't just give your first draft on this story, would you?"
