With a budget of over $100 million for a ten-episode first season, The Mandalorian show-runner and writer, Jon Favreau, isn’t slowing down.
In an interview with Collider, while on press tour for his upcoming Lion King live action, Favreau revealed that he had been writing season 2 of The Mandalorian that morning.
While season 2 hasn’t entered full production yet, Favreau’s team are using the Epic engine to pull off special effects.
“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.”
While acting as show-runner and producer for the series, he has tapped Thor Ragnarök director Taika Waititi, Bryce Dallas Howard, Dope director, Rick Famuyiwa and Jessica Jones director, Deborah Chow, to direct episodes.
Star Wars Clone Wars and Rebels creator and director, Dave Filoni, will direct the first episode.
With five months to go till release and no official trailer as yet, one can only assume that Lucasfilm will drop an announcement this week at San Diego Comic-Con.
The Mandalorian launches on Disney’s streaming service, Disney+, on November 12th.
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by Luke Hancock.