As for the ethics of working with images of an actor who died in 1994, Knoll said: “We weren’t doing anything that I think Peter Cushing would’ve objected to.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s visual effects supervisor John Knoll has hit back at critics of the decision to digitally resurrect Peter Cushing as the Grand Moff Tarkin, a character who previously appeared in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope.
The film-makers used actor Guy Henry as a digital stand-in for Cushing, and employed motion-capture and a facial-expression tracker to animate footage and photographs of Cushing.
So we wouldn’t do this if the estate had objected or didn’t feel comfortable with this idea.”