Soon to be Disney Legend, Jon Favreau spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the forthcoming series, The Mandalorian. Favreau talked about the new technology he’s using, his vision for the series, and the way he likes to tell stories.
Yuri Hasegawa
Fast Facts:
- The Hollywood Reporter sat down with Jon Favreau to discuss some of his biggest projects and what he’s working on for the future.
- Tomorrow Favreau is among one of several individuals being honored as a Disney Legend at the D23 Expo 2019 in Anaheim, California.
- Favreau directed and co-starred in the first Iron Man movie, the film that ultimately launched the super successful Marvel Cinematic Universe.
- In addition to his involvement in Marvel Studios, Favreau directed two of Disney’s live-action remakes, The Jungle Book and The Lion King and, he created the first live-action Star Wars series for Disney+ titled The Mandalorian .
- The first trailer for the new series will debut at the D23 Expo on August 23.
Yuri Hasegawa
What he’s saying:
- Favreau on Golem Creations, his new technology project: “My company is called Golem Creations because the Golem could be used to protect the village or you could lose control and it rampages. Technology is that way. You have to make sure that you know why and how you are engaging technology. Are you using it just to grow or are you using it to engage people in a way that is pleasing to them?”
- On using technology to inspire the next generation: ”My fascination is with where technology and storytelling overlap. Méliès, the Lumière brothers, Walt Disney, Jim Cameron. It comes from the tradition of stage magic. When you have a tech breakthrough like Star Wars, like Avatar, like Jurassic Park, people's minds go into a fugue state where they just accept this illusion as reality.”
- On how technology shapes Star Wars: “That's why Star Wars is so enduring and why we're surrounded [here] by artwork for Star Wars, why that's a world I want to play in because it's tech and myth coming together in a perfect way.”
Yuri Hasegawa
- On the focus of the new production technology: “It could be anything from The Mandalorian, where we're using game engine technology, virtual camera work and virtual production that we developed on Lion King, applying those learnings to designing a project where you could use virtual sets and virtual set extensions using real-time rendering, which is something that people talk about but we're the first people to actually apply it to a production.”
- How technology has evolved in the 20 years since the prequels: “This is 20 years later, and also there's been a democratization of the skill set too. It's no longer a few vendors innovating in ivory towers, that information has been expanded and disseminated and democratized so that effects that would cost you millions of dollars, you can do it on a PC now, with consumer-facing filmmaking tools…Now, we have video walls, NVIDIA video cards that allow a refresh rate that allows you to do in-camera effects, we're in there taking advantage of the cutting-edge stuff.”
Yuri Hasegawa
- Reality vs. technology: “Every film is a puzzle, and there's a freedom that you have as a storyteller if you go to the real environment; it affects you and the human element…The way I work and the stories I'm telling are geared specifically toward what this technology has to offer, so I could not make Episode IX using these tools.”
- What’s special about The Mandalorian: I’m trying to evoke the aesthetics of not just the original trilogy but the first film. Not just the first film but the first act of the first film. What was it like on Tatooine? What was going on in that cantina? That has fascinated me since I was a child, and I love the idea of the darker, freakier side of Star Wars, the Mad Max aspect of Star Wars.”
- On his very specific vision for The Mandalorian: “I wrote four of the episodes before I even had a deal, because I wanted to do this but only if they wanted to do the version that I wanted to do. I had been thinking about Star Wars since Disney acquired Star Wars.”
- On executive producing The Mandalorian: “The TV model allowed me to be an executive producer [on Mandalorian], which allowed me to, on my own time, write everything. It's a lot like being a chef. You write the menu, you staff up with people who are great at what they do, you oversee and help guide the people who are actually cooking the food, working the line, and then at the end, you plate."
- On The Mandalorian and the future of Disney+: “But Bob Iger says Disney+ is the future of the company. So there is some pressure on this anchor show. That's why he's good at what he does. But this feels to me like when we made Iron Man. It didn't feel like the future of Marvel was resting on it, [even though] the future of Marvel was resting on it because if we failed they would have lost their characters that were collateral.