Felicity Jones cast as the lead in Gareth Edwards' STAR WARS spinoff

With the details of director Gareth “Godzilla” Edwards’ planned Star Wars standalone spinoff movie being more closely guarded than the recipe for Coca Cola flavoured KFC, we’ve had nothing but rumours to go on. Quite often, contradictory rumours in fact (at this point the movie is either a Boba Fett origin story, or a young Han Solo adventure, or a heist movie about a group of bounty hunters hired to steal the original Death Star plans for the rebels). But now it looks like we finally have some solid news, but unfortunately it’s one of those good news/bad news situations.

The bad news: Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany, who we’ve championed on this site for years, did not land the lead role as previously rumoured. The good news: It appears that Felicity Jones is actually in talks for the film’s lead, according to THR.

Not having seen any of the TV series in which the young British actress starred, and my only big screen exposure being her very brief appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – a movie I would rather forget huge chunks of – I really didn’t expect much from Jones in the Oscar nominated Theory of Everything, especially given all the praise her co-star Eddie Redmayne was getting for his performance as her “husband” Stephen Hawking. But damn, if Jones didn’t surprise me with her incredible acting chops, something that didn’t go unnoticed as she bagged her own Oscar nomination for the role. She apparently beat out the likes of the aforementioned Maslany as well as Kate Mara and Rooney Mara, all acting heavyweights (despite their physical stature) for the part, which says a lot.

Of course we have zero idea as to exactly what that part will be in the still unnamed Star Wars movie, but according to THR’s sources both Aaron Paul and Edgar Ramirez are being considered for the male lead role opposite her. Not that that little factoid actually helps us in the slightest as Paul and Ramirez are such vastly different actors that they could be just about anybody.

About a Boy‘s Chris Weitz (who’s already dabbled in genre films with The Golden Compass and Twilight Saga: New Moon) was hired last week as the new screenwriter after original scribe Gary Whitta (Book of Eli, After Earth) had turned in his draft of the script. And that is all we know for now – Sigh- although with the film supposed to be releasing next year we should hopefully be hearing some details in the near future.

Last Updated: February 6, 2015