Jon Favreau Says Not To Expect a ‘Skeleton Crew’ Tie-in to ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3 or a ‘Mandalorian’ Movie
In a new profile interview with Variety concerning his upcoming star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Jon Favreau looked back at his entire career, from his early days as an actor on Swingers and as a director on Elf, to his ventures in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and then setting up the look and feel of the Star Wars franchise on Disney Plus (for a while, at least).
Favreau is the creator and showrunner of The Mandalorian, the streamer’s flagship show and the backbone of a sub-franchise commonly referred to as the “MandoVerse”. So far, it spans two seasons of the main series, with one more on the way on March 1, and a season of the spin-off The Book of Boba Fett, but it’s about to get much busier. A second spin-off series is hitting the platform in just a few months, centered on Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka Tano, and a third is also coming out later this year, titled Skeleton Crew.
It was created by Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s Jon Watts, who also served as a director on the series (the film’s scribe Christopher Ford served as a writer too), and is known to be taking the universe to a whole new direction by exploring uncharted territories and introducing new characters (four kids and a supervising adult played by Jude Law) and their adventures. Favreau has said before that the series will have direct ties into The Mandalorian season 4, which is already written, but warned Variety that the third season will not serve as an introduction to the characters, unlike what happened with Ahsoka, which got a backdoor pilot in season 2. Added Favreau:
“Each storyteller brings their own personality to it. The groups that are working on [Skeleton Crew] are led by Jon Watts, whom I collaborated with on all the Spider-Man movies. This has been a real fun time and the great filmmakers that he’s engaged with have been bringing their perspectives as well.”
Looking at the future, we know that the fourth season of the main series is already in the works and could potentially shoot within a few months. But beyond that, we don’t have a clue of what’s coming (yet another Mandalorian spin-off series is reportedly going into production soon, which may or may not be a Bo-Katan spin-off series). However, Favreau tells us not to hold our breaths for The Mandalorian hitting the big screen any time soon:
“There’s always an opportunity when you have a set of characters and stories that people connect with that you could cross media into different areas. Marvel does it quite effectively. It’s just a matter of where our time should be spent and what the appetite of the audience is. With all these stories we’re telling, it definitely is a full-time job just keeping this going with what we’re doing now. Television has a much different rhythm and schedule than film does.”
Jon Favreau also confirmed that there is a lot of synergy between his work in the Star Wars galaxy and what Kevin Feige is doing over at the Marvel camp. Both filmmakers talk on a regular basis and enjoy each other’s work, which naturally results in them learning from what the other one’s approach:
“I speak to [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige regularly, and we’re always watching each other’s stuff. Clearly I’ve worked in the MCU and I’m dealing with people who worked in Star Wars for a long time. There’s a lot of overlap, and certainly in the fan base. I think one informs the other, that’s just the nature of storytelling, on the technological side as well as stylistically.”
The timing of this quote is especially interesting given that James Gunn recently said that his approach to building a cinematic universe populated by DC characters will be informed by Star Wars‘ world-building approach.
(Photo: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages)
And it isn’t just Marvel that is informing Star Wars on how to operate (and vice versa, of course). The Mandalorian became the pioneer in using a new piece of technology known as the Volume, a massive LED screen where they can project in real time the backgrounds they need for each scene, as opposed to using green screens and rendering them later. Favreau said the following about how technology has influenced the show:
“Whether it’s display screens, virtual reality, augmented reality, real-time render, game engine technology, all of these weave back and forth and inform one another. Machine learning is allowing for a lot of technologies to accelerate. We always have to be mindful of not letting the progress get ahead of us and always having a human element that informs the way technology is being utilized. I think storytelling is a really important nexus point.”
The Mandalorian returns on March 1. Jon Favreau received his star on the Walk of Fame on Monday, February 13. Release dates for Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew have not been set yet, but they will probably arrive during the summer and November/December, respectively.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
