The popular assumption is that the upcoming film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is just season four of The Mandalorian. Season three ended three years ago this week, and in that time, creator Jon Favreau wrote scripts to continue the story. However, in a new interview, he explained what season four was going to be and how it’s not at all what The Mandalorian and Grogu is.
“Before the [2023] strike, we were writing a fourth season,” Favreau said at CinemaCon last week. “And then, like with the Dodgers, you get a tap on the shoulder in the bullpen. ‘Do you want to pitch in the big game?’ We have been talking about doing something for the big screen with this for a long time. I thought it was gonna probably be some mixing of different media, like something for streaming and then having a theatrical component. And then I finally got asked, ‘Would you be open to exploring these characters for the cinema?’ You have to completely switch hats then.”
“You can’t just take those scripts and turn them into a movie,” Favreau told SFX Magazine in a complimentary interview. “There were a lot of characters, it assumed you’d watched the whole show, and it was teeing up what was happening moving into Ahsoka [season two]. It was about Grand Admiral Thrawn and following the larger [Star Wars] storyline.”
On the one hand, you get it. You can’t just turn a fourth season of a TV show into a movie and assume general audiences are going to get it. Plus, whatever you think of the show, it does weave its storylines over the course of several hours. A movie has to come to a satisfying conclusion in two hours. So writing something completely new for the big screen is certainly the smart, safe play.
“Here’s the trick: You gotta deliver something that the audience enjoys, regardless of the medium,” Favreau said, going back to those CinemaCon quotes. “And in this case, what could we do that we couldn’t do before? We have to treat it like the first season and the first episode of The Mandalorian, which is: Don’t assume anybody’s seen anything, but also make it clear to the people who’ve been with Star Wars for 50 years that this is something that is for them. We can’t forget that Star Wars hasn’t been in theaters for almost seven years. There are audience members who were not old enough to know Star Wars in the theater. We have to invite those fans in.”
And yet, we do hope whatever story this movie tells—one that we think heavily features Rotta the Hutt—does leave hardcore Star Wars fans with some things to chew on as we wait for the next chapter in the saga, be that Star Wars, The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, or anything at all.
The Mandalorian and Grogu opens on May 22. There’s no word yet on when Ahsoka season two, which presumably does follow Thrawn and the larger Star Wars galaxy, will debut.
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