UPDATE: Jon Favreau Is Currently Writing ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2 and Pre-Production is Already Underway
What’s next for Jon Favreau after The Mandalorian? More of it, apparently, as the showrunner and big-name Star Wars fan is currently writing a second season for the Disney+ series.
While speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote next weekend’s The Lion King, Favreau revealed that he’s completely finished work on the first season of The Mandalorian and is in the process of working on the second season of the series:
“I got together with the guy, Dave Filoni, who is my partner on this one as producer, and we’re writing this stuff and coming up – it’s honestly like turning over your toy chest and playing with all the Star Wars toys together. We’re having a great time. It’s all new characters, it’s gonna be on Disney+ coming up in the Fall, and we’re done with the first season. I was actually writing part of the second season now. So I’m having a blast.”
You can watch Favreau’s full comments below, with the Star Wars discussion starting at 11 minutes and 45 seconds into the video:
This jives with existing rumors about the project, which stated that Lucasfilm basically greenlit a second season before The Mandalorian was even showcased at Star Wars Celebration Chicago earlier this year. More recently, there are rumors that Disney and Lucasfilm are so happy with Rick Famuyiwa, one of the show’s directors, that he is in discussions to direct one or more episodes of the Cassian Andor-focused series. Those same rumors indicate that the studio liked the work that the other directors did as well, so don’t be surprised if we see the likes of Dave Filoni, Bryce Dallas Howard, Deborah Chow, and Taika Waititi back behind the camera for the Cassian Andor project, The Mandalorian, or the third planned live-action TV series.
In terms of when the show’s second season will arrive, it seems likely that it will hit Disney+ after the Cassian Andor project, which is believed to debut in 2021. Both will probably hit Disney+ that year, with a third series and potentially more on the horizon. But with 2020, it seems like The Clone Wars will be the main event for Disney+, at least as far as Star Wars content goes – Falcon and Winter Soldier, the first live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe series to be produced by Marvel Studios instead of Marvel TV, seems to be the biggest draw to Disney+ next year.
UPDATE!
After speaking with Jon Favreau at The Lion King premiere a few days ago, Collider has just posted an exclusive with a bit more information on the status of The Mandalorian Season 2. Favreau revealed some of the modern techniques they use to establish shots and visual effects, which involves a lot of advance set up and work:
“In The Mandalorian because we’re doing live-action production, we’re using the Epic game engine and using that to do real-time in-camera visual effects. So if you visited the set for The Mandalorian you would’ve seen a completely video-wall wrapped stage and we were in there filming the characters in the foreground, and oftentimes either blue screen or full digital versions of set extensions in the background with Parallax, because the positional data of the camera was informing the backgrounds, so it was like a translight that had perspective. So that allowed us to have environments—as long as we could build them digitally and put enough work into planning it, we could have the game engine be used for creating effects in a timeframe that allows us to get a TV season done.”
Because of this method to handling development on the series, pre-production of The Mandalorian Season 2 is already underway, even though the show’s first season is still months away from debuting on Disney+.
Favreau explains that the set up for how they are going to shoot the show requires them to begin work on Season 2 now, because these techniques involve helping them understand and establish how they will be shooting scenes for the next season’s episodes:
“But all of that requires us to use the same v-cam techniques in pre-production on The Mandalorian so that we know exactly what we need to see. So if you visited the set now as we’re starting to get into Season 2, it looks a lot like the set of The Lion King as we’re planning how we’re gonna shoot it ahead of time.”
In simpler terms, the level of financing going into this show paired with the modern Virtual Reality (VR) technology, allows Favreau/Disney/Lucasfilm to make a series, on this grand of size and scale, manageable on a TV production schedule time frame.
The Mandalorian’s premise is as follows:
After the stories of Jango and Boba Fett, another warrior emerges in the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic.
The Mandalorian Season 1 will be released on a weekly basis starting on November 12, the launch date for the Disney+ streaming service. No release window for Season 2 has been given.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
