It is 2016. One can safely say the Internet has been around for a while. Yet companies keep getting caught flat-footed when fans use the Internet to find things that corporations – like Lucasfilm – want to keep hidden. One cannot simply walk into Mordor put illustrated pages from the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and expect no one to find them. Needless to say, they were found.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ROGUE ONE BEYOND THIS POINT.
Early this morning German Star Wars fansite Jedi-Bibliothek alledgedly made a juicy discovery. Edelweiss had put out their winter catalog online. For those not in the know, Edelweiss is an online search tool where publishers can pay to have their upcoming books listed for anyone to find. It”s a Sears catalog for the 21st century. But sometimes a book appears on the list and it ruins a carefully cultivated mystery box. Such was the case when Jedi-Bibliothek stumbled across Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: The Official Visual Story Guide.
Produced by Media Lab Books and set to go on sale on January 24th, 2017 (over a month after the film”s release), The Official Visual Guide will be 164 pages in length. 130 of those will be full-color. As of this writing, the book”s Edelweiss page has been completely scrubbed of imagery.
[UPDATE 3/17/16 5:18PM EDT] – Representatives from Disney/Lucasfilm have reached out to HitFix to say the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story information is the product of an unauthorized leak and “A lot of the information listed isn't even correct .” As such, we have removed the content.