While Edwards didn’t explain why it was ultimately removed, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said months ago that Rogue One was crawl-less to set it apart from other movies in the Star Wars series.
I do believe that those opening crawl words are actually floating out there in space somewhere.”
“Because if you never give up, you sometimes can join the Rebel Alliance and help blow up the Death Star.”
He also held a Reddit AMA in which he revealed, among other tidbits, that Rogue One did originally have an opening crawl in one of the first versions of the script: “Gary Whitta actually wrote one in the first draft.