A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one! Lucasfilm announced out of the blue today that The Mandalorian & Grogu is a feature film going into production in the fall. This is not any of the previously announced films, including Dave Filoni’s New Republic story, but a film directed by Jon Favreau himself.
Seems likely that this is, effectively, The Mandalorian Season 4. It wasn’t announced at Celebration, so I imagine this came out of discussions about what the fourth season of Mandalorian’s story was and how it could be brought to fruition. It’ll be interesting to learn how these decisions got made in the coming months..
Although I personally loved how many ideas and weird moments showed up in Season 3 of The Mandalorian, this format will enable the storytellers to focus on our lead characters (now sharing top billing) and bring these icons of Star Wars to the status they’ve earned.
Star Wars live-action television is only four years old. To me, it seemed not only like a experiment with technology, but an experiment to see if the spirit that was synonymous with cinema could work on the small screen. The experiment has been a huge success, but to me, nothing compares to the big screen. How exciting to see that we’ll see Din Djarin in the multiplex instead of on our iPads.
Jon Favreau in the director’s chair is great news as well. The man can direct. Between Iron Man, which was so successful it sparked the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or Elf, one of the few holiday classics of the modern era, or adaptations of Disney classics with cutting edge technology, he’s the perfect fit to take the Disney Plus Star Wars era and paint on a bigger canvas. He understands the world, he invented the characters, he has experience and passion for the material.
So much more to say about this, of course, but for now, it’s just an exciting day to be a fan! New things! Surprises! Let’s goooooo!
P.S. Buried in Lucasfilm’s article is another soft annoucement: that Dave Filoni is hard at work on Season 2 of Ahsoka. So, confirmed-ish!
I'm glad this isnt *replacing* the Mandoverse Filoni movie that all the shows have been building towards. Maybe having Happy, I mean Jon Fav, direct it and make it as epic as it deserves to be on the big screen from his experience in that realm will help get more newbs on board for the Filoni movie that we all are aching for!!! But Season 2 Ahsoka?!?! YAAAS. So glad. OMGrogu. ❤️
Pretty good news for a random Tuesday.