We get our first official look at Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, plus a director list. The first episode will be directed by Dave Filoni, and other directors will include Deborah Chow (Jessica Jones), Rick Famuyiwa (Dope), Bryce Dallas Howard (Solemates), and Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok).
The series is being written and executive produced by Favreau. Filoni, Kathleen Kennedy, Colin Wilson and Karen Gilchrist are also producing.
Still nothing official on the cast (who’s in the armor, Lucasfilm?), but Making Star Wars has some evidence (though probably not for the armor-wearer, though who knows) as they continue their set reporting.
The show is expected to debut on Disney’s streaming service, which is due to launch in 2019. It’s supposedly filming now. (A lot of filming. Quite a lot of filming.) Also rumored, at least one cast member, who seems like a likely candidate for the lead. If it’s open season on news, though, we may get a confirmation sooner rather than later.
More details on Star Wars Resistance, including the return of Greg Proops, more on racing, and details on actor Bobby Moynihan’s character, who hasn’t had an official reveal yet. We also get some insights on why they picked the show’s timeline placement of six months before The Force Awakens.
“It’s a little hard for the younger fans to wrap their heads around it if it was, say 15 years before The Force Awakens,” [Head writer Brandon] Auman explains. “Then it’s a very nebulous timeline. You’re kind of not sure. The fact that we’ve got Poe Dameron and BB-8 from the very beginning — kids and any fan of any age automatically just know… ‘This is the new movies, this is where it’s gonna take place,’ so it’s just easier. And it was just fun to kind of roll in and back up a little bit instead of just trying to follow exactly where the movies are at.”
The show will even overlap with The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi… Eventually.
Jason Ward at Making Star Wars has it “on good authority” that Jon Favreau’s live-action Star Wars series will begin filming in southern California as soon as next week… And they have set photos. It certainly looks like Star Wars.
If filming is indeed that close, that could mean that some sort of official announcement is on the horizon as well. (Though maybe not, as we have no real benchmarks for how a live-action Star Wars series would be promoted.)
Officially, we know from Favreau himself that the show is set seven years after A New Hope (so, three years after Return of the Jedi) and will feature all-new characters. The show will drop on Disney’s upcoming streaming service and is said to be budgeted for a high-end $10M per episode. We don’t have an ETA on the series, but the streaming service is expected to launch in 2019.
We met Team Fireball, part of the Star Wars Resistance cast a few weeks ago: Now it’s time for some details on “the Aces,” pilots who protect the show’s main setting, the Colossus platform.
Meet the cast of Resistance – or at least the “Team Fireball” portion: Kazuda Xiono (Christopher Sean), Jarek Yeager (Scott Lawrence), Tam Ryvora (Suzie McGrath), and Neeku Vozo (Josh Brener).
The characters now have entries on the Databank as well: Kazuda, Jarek, Tam, Neeku and droid Bucket.
Still nothing on the frog, though. And I assume we’ll get some more details on the last key figure on the poster, Myrna Velasco’s Torra Doza, in another video, since she must have her own team.
In Variety’s cover story on Hollywood, Netflix and the other direct-to-consumer platforms being developed, Disney CEO Bob Iger reveals that the company’s streaming service will be called “Disney Play.” THR has since gone back and changed the quote to be “a Disney play” – so it’s likely not the service’s name after all. Back to Disneyflix!
Iger says the service is the company’s “biggest priority” for 2019, and the article explores the costs, stakes and other business concerns for not just Disney, but all the other companies in the game.
One estimate says Disney would need 40 million subscribers to break even if they went with a price of $6 a month. (No pricing has been officially announced yet, but Iger has previously said that the Disney service will be cheaper than Netflix, which runs $8-14.)
The Disney service, expected to launch in 2019, will be home to a new chunk of The Clone Wars and at least one brand-new live-action Star Wars show from Jon Favreau. Older episodes of TCW (currently on Netflix) are probably a good bet, and I have no doubt that Rebels (which has never streamed outside the Disney ecosystem) and the upcoming Resistance will be found there as well. One thing the new service won’t have is the older Star Wars films – and it might only get new ones like Episode IX for a limited time (ala Rogue One and The Last Jedi on Netflix), as there’s a broadcast deal with Turner that runs through 2024.
Fan Jose Ruiz noted an interesting bit of information in the code for the Resistance page on StarWars.com: It pegs the show’s setting as “about six months before The Force Awakens.”
Set about six months before The Force Awakens, Star Wars Resistance tells the story of Kazuda Xiono, a young pilot recruited by the Resistance and tasked with a top-secret mission to spy on the growing threat of the First Order.
The timing of the series isn’t mentioned in what was sent out Friday, but if it’s in the page’s meta description – which is there for search engine purposes, i.e. “When is Star Wars Resistance set?” – I doubt it was ever meant to be a secret.
Well, that was quick. As rumored, Resistance is coming on Sunday, October 7 to the Disney Channel, and we have a trailer!
We see Poe Dameron, BB-8 and even a glimpse of Phasma. Here’s some more details from StarWars.com:
We’re also thrilled to bring you intel on the first episode! In the one-hour premiere “The Recruit,” Poe and BB-8 assign Kaz to the Colossus, where he meets a cast of colorful new aliens, droids and creatures. While undercover to spy on the growing threat of the First Order, Kaz works as a mechanic and lives with Poe’s old friend Yeager — a veteran pilot who operates a starship repair shop run by his crew: Tam, Neeku and a battered old astromech called Bucket.
“Can you imagine what it’s like to be an ace pilot?” Kaz asks.
Lucasfilm has also sent out the cast list with who’s playing who:
– Christopher Sean as Kazuda Xiono
– Suzie McGrath as Tam Ryvora
– Scott Lawrence as Jarek Yeager
– Myrna Velasco as Torra Doza
– Josh Brener as Neeku Vozo
– Donald Faison as Hype Fazon
– Jim Rash and Bobby Moynihan as Flix and Orka, respectively
– Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron
– Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma
– Rachel Butera as General Leia Organa
The series was created by Lucasfilm Animation’s Dave Filoni. The Clone Wars/Rebels vets Athena Portillo, Justin Ridge and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles‘ Brandon Auman are the executive producers, with another LFL vet, Amy Beth Christenson, as art director.
Jason at Making Star Wars has heard that the new cartoon, Resistance, will premiere on The Disney Channel on Sunday, October 7.
We knew from the initial announcement that the show would debut there, before moving to Disney XD for good. But this is the first we’ve heard of an actual date beyond “fall.”
