Knights of the Old Republic, or KOTOR, has been an iconic installment in the nearly 50 year old Star Wars franchise. The RPG has had a loyal following of players and fans, growing since its release in 2003. KOTOR exists in a strange purgatory - it is a cult classic within one of the largest IPs in the world, but is largely ignored by the studio that owns it. Fans have begged for a revival of the Old Republic era, be it in a remake of the beloved RPG, a reboot, a sequel to round out a trilogy, all of which have either gone unanswered or have been shrouded in secrecy under an icy blanket of development hell. Fans have even dreamed of a big screen adaptation of KOTOR, dreams that have largely gone unrealized … until now.
The tail end of Star Wars Week - the unofficial Star Wars holiday the week of May the Fourth - witnessed the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Escape From Taris. Produced by Studio 70, the theater and production department of the King’s Academy based in West Palm Beach, Florida. That’s right, the first ever live action realization of the most beloved Star Wars story outside the Skywalker Saga is finally here.
Helmed by Austin Parenti, the Executive Director of Studio 70 at King’s Academy, Escape From Taris has taken the online fan community by storm, giving fans hope for KOTOR but also resparking the demand and conversation around. For the first time Parenti discusses the production process and narrative decisions in the movie.
Josh Eisley: For people that aren't familiar with Kings Academy, Studio 70, and yourself - who are you? What is Kings Academy? What's your role there?
Austin Parenti: Kings Academy is a Pre-K through 12th grade private Christian school in West Palm Beach. So we're not a college. Literally on campus you'll see two-year-olds and three-year-olds and you'll see 18-year-olds graduating in a couple of weeks. It is a pretty extraordinary place.Over the years a lot of things have happened that have resulted in some excellent people coming and building amazing programs. It feels a little bit like a college has majors and smaller colleges within a university. We have aviation, pre-med, pre-law, a dynamite theater program.
I took the program from basically two elective classes and tried to build something with more progression and more consistency, trying to make it compete with what was already on campus. The coolest thing we could ever do is a full movie, not just typical student short films. So in 2021, the president enabled us to use the summer to do a summer intensive with high schoolers where we would make a full-length movie in 40 days. That was called The Fountain of Youth and it was met with really great success. That summer film program is what we used to produce Knights of the Old Republic one, and we will do that for two and three. Students opt to do it over the summer alongside faculty for 40 days — they're forfeiting their summer breaks to come hang out with us and make a movie. But it's the only way to do something on this scale. It's become the crown jewel and flagship of the program.
Josh: Star Wars is probably one of the most recognizable IPs out there. And it's interesting because even within that, there are a lot of sub-IPs - Knights of the Old Republic, Starfighter, Rogue Squad, all these things. So from your perspective, but also from a project perspective - why KOTOR out of all of them?
Austin: That was a really difficult thing to discern. I grew up playing the game and lost count after like 17 or 18 playthroughs. You can't just play it once — if you get through it once, you have to play it again and try all these different choices. It was always my favorite game. The characters are obviously the very heart of that narrative. What Knights of the Old Republic was for me were friendships, getting to know Mission, Zaalbar, Canderous. It was meaningful, especially because of the writing — you're in it, you're the one talking, you're not seeing someone else do it. It stuck with me my whole life, and I knew the dream of all dreams would be to make a Knights of the Old Republic show or movie series. We had about nine ideas on the table for summer 2025. We have this LED virtual production technology that lets us do Star Wars pretty well. We cut our teeth on it with an earlier series called Star Wars: Gray Trials. One of my co-workers said, "We should just do Knights of the Old Republic. It's the best expanded universe story, period." I told him it was too hard.
Knights is sprawling, there are space battles and exotic locations. But then we started actually thinking about it and realized that because of the limitations in 2003, it's actually quite a quiet game for the content it covers. You're only ever with three characters at once interacting with a maximum of six NPCs. Maybe it wouldn't actually be impossible. I realized that Disney was clearly not going to do much with this, and no other fan was in a position like ours. We could spend 40 days over the summer with a small budget to pay professional actors and have an LED virtual production studio. We were probably the only ones who could ever get a Knights of the Old Republic film out there for the fans. When I articulated that and realized it, it actually felt like a duty.
Josh: With all the other fan projects - Project Hyperion, Unreal Cinema - this is really the biggest one to come to fruition, probably the only one especially at this scale. What is that like, to have that feeling of “we pulled it off?”
Austin: As a person of faith, my first thought is glory to God. I had tracked the guy's story who was attempting the Unreal Engine show and saw that he was plagued with panic attacks. The stress of the project seemed to have just crashed upon him. As we moved through post-production there were like 500 visual effects shots in this film and I did like 497 of them. I was the only one who knew Unreal well enough on my team and it was overwhelming. I totally understood why no one else had done this and why no one who started it was able to finish. In reality, there are so many things that carried me through that aren't just me and my endurance.
I'm getting paid to be a high school teacher here and the school invested money in this project, so I've got to see it through. That's an honor, but also a firm boundary and support whereas everybody else who's endeavored to do this has been working in their spare time, maybe putting themselves in financially risky positions. I'm privileged that the support systems were there. Looking back, my only hope is we did it and it's the best it could possibly be, because I'm sadly aware we probably won't see another film like this. I wish there would be 60 studios producing Knights of the Old Republic trilogies with all different choices. Ours might be the only one that ever actually gets out there, and I wish that wasn't the case.
Josh: You said you landed on KOTOR through conversation. Did you have to get approved? What was that pitch process like?
Austin: It was kind of awkward - “hi, can I make a video game movie, and three of them, based on my favorite game ever, please?” We have a headmaster in charge of the academic side and a president in charge of outward fundraising. With the president I was like, out of the ideas we have, this is the one that would actually get us the most attention because there's a pre-existing fanbase. And part of my pitch was: this is the film that Star Wars fans have wanted and that Disney doesn't really seem to be interested in — so we can be the studio that brings Star Wars fans the movie that Disney won't. It was actually a soft pitch at a different event, not even a formal meeting. I just saw him smile and I was like, "Oh Lord, what did I sign us up for?" And then it was pretty much smooth sailing from there. With different leadership, I don't think this ever would have gotten off the ground at most run-of-the-mill high schools.
Josh: Especially at a private Christian school, and I say this as a Christian,I feel like there's an unfair perception that we’re kind of sticks in the mud, more so combined with a private school setting. So it's awesome to see that they saw that vision and trusted you with it.
Austin: We had done Star Wars: Gray Trials before this. I feel like we were true to Star Wars canon, but we did do a lot of religious deep dives. The film asked the question — what would you do if there was a Sith who was kind of a nice guy, who uses his freedom to try and serve others? And likewise, could there be a Jedi who's a bit of a legalist and kind of an a-hole because he's so caught up in following the rules? That film ended up being a really cool testimony for the rest of the school. Star Wars and popular fiction can actually communicate Gospel truth. I think that opened up many people's minds to us doing Star Wars films in a way that's not in opposition to our faith. Now, Knights is very true to the script, so you don't really see a ton of Christian imagery. It wouldn't have been appropriate to hijack that story and turn it into a Gospel message. But I think even the emphasis on Carth's decision to stay and the altruism there was probably only something that came to my mind because of my worldview.
Josh: About 140 different people worked on it between faculty, students, and alumni. Was there anything that surprised you — that made you take a step back and realize what was being done?
Austin: We only had 25 people on set every day, so it didn't feel like 140. One of the surprising things was putting the credits together and realizing there were a lot of people I'd never even met. Students and alumni at college in New York or LA were corralling their roommates and film major friends to build 3D models, 3D printables, painting them and shipping them over. There were watch parties at universities where alumni had established themselves with friends who contributed meaningful work and ended up credited as props and set designers. Some of the people who contributed the most essential things to this film I've never met. The other side was the digital assets.
I really didn't want to do Knights of the Old Republic with inaccurate 3D models. Everyone knows what the Endar Spire looks like. I said in one video it's the equivalent of watching a World War II film and instead of a Sherman tank they're using something from Vietnam or Iraq. So I was searching the internet for anyone who had already made KOTOR content and got a Discord server started with people who had worked on the [Unreal Cinema] group or Hyperion before that, just begging them if I could buy their models. Their community came alive, they contributed to the project, and now I'm on Discord with them once a day talking about new props for the second movie. We covered like three or four continents with this project, which I still can't wrap my mind around.
Josh: There's been a rise in fan films made completely with AI. You said there's no AI in this. Even though that would be almost like an easy button, why make that decision? Walk me through that philosophy.
Austin: In the process it was a conservative philosophy. I wasn't sure and I just wanted to play it safe. AI was literally becoming a thing as this film was being created. But it got more and more tempting toward the end of post-production. In hindsight I'm glad we didn't, and it will continue to be our mantra moving forward. I think something's beauty is directly tied to intentionality. Everything we experience that's beautiful is there because of cause and effect. I've never logged into a randomly generated Minecraft world and said "whoa." But I have logged into someone's creation in that world and said "whoa." The same substance, when someone puts it in a particular spot for a reason, is directly tied to my appreciation for it. Any process that involves randomness or procedural generation, that isn't the outflow of somebody's design, intention, and desire is ultimately never going to be as beautiful as if somebody put it there on purpose.
The second thing tied to beauty is how long it took to get there. You walk into the Sistine Chapel and your first question is how long did it take Michelangelo to paint this. If something happens instantaneously, we don't appreciate it as much. Somehow 500 visual effects shots and thousands of hours actually makes the film more beautiful.
Josh: Fast forward to the end of production, it's release, you have a premiere for it. What was it like watching it for the first time? What was that like?
Austin: I wish I had something more romantic to say, but I had watched it like a thousand times at this point because I'd been tweaking sound effects and visual effects and animations. I was just so glad to be ready to work on movie two. But there's always an electric energy when you're in the room and you're listening to the audience's responses, and there were plenty of actors who were there seeing the footage for the first time. So it was of course a really distinguished moment.
This is the first of a three-part series - Part I focusing on production, Part II focusing on creative decision, and Part III focusing on Star Wars dicsussion. You can view the uncut interivew here. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic - Escape from Taris is now streaming on YouTube here!