By the D23 Team
It’s almost time for the newest Star Wars adventure—and the excitement is truly of galactic proportions! In Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, the Empire has fallen, but Imperial warlords remain dispersed throughout the galaxy... As the New Republic fights to protect what the Rebellion won, they enlist legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his young apprentice, Grogu.
The Mandalorian and Grogu, directed by Disney Legend Jon Favreau and filmed for IMAX, brings this iconic pair to the big screen for the very first time. Also starring Sigourney Weaver and Jeremy Allen White, the film is written by Favreau & Dave Filoni & Noah Kloor, and is produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Ian Bryce, Favreau, and Filoni—with Karen Gilchrist, John Bartnicki, and Carrie Beck as executive producers, and music by Ludwig Göransson.
Ahead of The Mandalorian and Grogu’s May 22 debut, D23 got our hands on an exclusive portrait of Favreau, above, taken during the recent CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, NV. Below, hear from Favreau himself about bringing Mando and Grogu to the big screen; taking incredible new Star Wars experiences directly to fans; and more...
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
D23: What do you think makes this story so well-suited for the big screen?
Jon Favreau (JF): There was an opportunity here, because there hasn't been Star Wars on the big screen for almost seven years. These are characters that people were familiar with from watching the show on Disney+, but there's still a lot of people who have never seen it. They might still be aware of Grogu and the Mandalorian; they may know of Ludwig Göransson's music. These characters have permeated the zeitgeist. There are fans that have been by our side since the very beginning—we owe them a lot, and they've spread the word. But there's a whole category of people, even younger viewers—somebody who's 12 years old now, seven years ago they weren't old enough to go to the movies and see a Star Wars film. But they might know the character; they may have played with a Grogu toy, and now they might be ready to be introduced to this world.
So I think it was a combination of factors. Most importantly, Dave Filoni and I talked about how we were planning on doing a fourth season [of the series] before the work stoppage around the strikes. When we came out of the strikes, the notion of doing a film had arisen—and we knew we couldn't just do what we were planning after season four, because that would assume everybody was familiar with the first three seasons. For a big movie like this, we had to be open to not just the audience that was familiar everything that happened, but also a new audience that might be open to experiencing Star Wars in the theaters for the first time.
D23: There’s definitely something to sharing this experience with others...
JF: Absolutely—that’s my memory of Star Wars, and that’s a big part of movies. Cinema in general is important, and having a generation experience how fun new movies are, and how relevant they are, and have much a communal experience feels different than just watching at home or sharing it on your phone. And part of that is, you're gonna bring somebody along. The group has to decide together what they're gonna see... If your friends are all going, you might go—and that might open you up to something new. That's what I felt with this film. We wanted to do something that, for one, delivered on the spectacle of what a movie theater could deliver. We had to make a bigger scale. We had lean into practical builds; complicated, interesting set pieces. But two, we also wanted to do something that was accessible to somebody who's curious about Star Wars but might not know everything—so that it felt like something that the whole group can enjoy together.
D23: To that end, Grogu is a character fans knew as “The Child” from the series—but he’s evolved quite a bit. From a storytelling perspective, how do you balance keeping an air of mystery about Grogu while also keeping the fans interested in seeing this evolution?
JF: Well, that character is inherently interesting. I don’t want to give too much away, obviously, but there are stretches of the film where we have Grogu alone—and it's relying a tremendous amount on how interesting he is; how interesting his position and his relationship is. Thanks to the design, the puppeteers, Ludwig Göransson's great score—it's all very compelling, I think. It's amazing how much these craftspeople can make you feel through this character... I think there's lot of stories to tell. I think you want have progression with that character; you want to see him age or level up. And the relationship with his father-slash-teacher, the Mandalorian, is want and changing too—which I think is one of the central themes of this film.
D23: Can you chat a bit about how Star Wars (and this film/The Mandalorian series, by extension) is feeding into experiences that guests can now have at Disney Parks and more—like the new mission featuring the Mandalorian and Grogu coming to Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run beginning May 22?
JF: I think that’s one of the nice things about working with Disney. There’s an opportunity to align a lot of these experiences together—and sometimes they even share technology. The technology that's used in in Smuggler's Run is Unreal Engine, a game engine, that we were using for The Mandalorian series; it’s also what we used in VR for planning and designing the sets. There’s a confluence of all these new technologies, and you could work with them together and leverage what you've done in one with the other.
So when I worked on Smuggler's Run, I pulled in stuff and shared it with the Imagineers—all the assets that we had built for the series. Being able to design levels; have more biomes and environments that you could explore because we had already explored a lot of it... It helps to reduce the time curve. There's a tremendous amount of work that goes into it—it's almost like game design, but it's also mixed with practical Audio-Animatronics®... Anything that we can do to help support that process creatively, we do. And now, all these projects I'm working on, there is a constant back and forth between what happens in the parks.
And then on Disney Cruise Line, that’s like having the parks come closer to you—plus you have the virtual experiences too. There's still a lot to explore... I think what's nice is when all those experiences are consistent, and you can start to build one on top of the other. And I think we're just scratching the surface of that. The new generation, the new era for Disney is going to open up a lot of opportunities to explore that.
See Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu in theaters beginning May 22!