Gareth Edwards’ standalone Star Wars movie doesn’t arrive until Dec. 16, 2016, we have no further information, besides the fact that Gary Whitta is writing it. Right now, it exists solely as a projection based on opinions about Edwards’ Godzilla and Whitta’s After Earth, combined with the general anxiety about all Star Wars projects. But now that projection can be filtered through the lens of cinematographer Greig Fraser, who tells HitFix that he’s signed on to help Edwards realize his Star Wars vision—whatever that turns out to be.
Fraser’s most famous work is probably Zero Dark Thirty, a film that had the prerequisite lots and lots of sand for any new Star Wars movie. But his varied credits also include relatively subdued dramas like the upcoming Foxcatcher and The Gambler, stylish crime and horror movies like Killing Them Softly and Let Me In, and just one effects-heavy fantasy, Snow White And The Huntsman—all of them suggesting the Rancor will definitely have a beautifully shot origin story, if that’s what Edwards is doing.
Not that Fraser is saying anything, hinting at a code of secrecy from Lucasfilm that will soon make him long for the easygoing, “it’s all good” attitude of the CIA. “I do know some specifics, but it’s obviously something I’ve signed my kidneys away for,” Fraser says. “I think I signed my left kidney to Disney and my right kidney to George Lucas. So I’d hate to be talking to you next time when I’m on dialysis.”
Among those specifics, Fraser says the film does have a working title—“but I don’t know if it’s up to me to tell you what that is”—and that he and Edwards have already bonded over their mutual love of Star Wars and their mutual fear of ruining it. “If I fuck it up then I fuck up my childhood. So, you know, the pressure’s on!” Fraser says, no doubt already wistfully recalling when he was working on less potentially controversial stories, like the role of torture in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.