The first public trailer for Jon Favreau’s highly anticipated Star Wars series The Mandalorian has arrived, and it looks fantastic.
Although a similar trailer was shown at Star Wars Celebration, it was never made available to the public. The trailer opens with helmets on stakes, and ominous shots of people hanging out in the desert. Then it moves into Star Wars action — fighting spaceships, battling droids, and face-to-face confrontations. It certainly feels freakier than a traditional Star Wars movie, but it also feels extremely Star Wars.
The Mandalorian is one of the biggest launch titles coming to the new streaming service Disney+. It’s heavily inspired by fan-favorite character Boba Fett and his father, Jango. The new Mandalorian character, played by Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones) will also help fill in the gap between Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, just after the fall of the Empire, and the rise of the First Order.
The goal is to bring a “darker, freakier side of Star Wars,” executive producer Jon Favreau (Iron Man, The Lion King) told The Hollywood Reporter. He wants to use the show’s aesthetic to answer questions about what it’s like to be on Tatooine during the era between trilogies. The original Star Wars trilogy, especially the first film, used Tatooine as a significant setting, and Favreau wants to use that area to tell new stories.
The Mandalorian gives Favreau the “opportunity to tell a story that’s bigger than television, but you don’t have the same expectations that a big holiday release has, which to me isn’t that type of Star Wars that comes out of me,” he told the Reporter.
“The type of Star Wars that I’m inspired to tell is a smaller thing with new characters,” Favreau said.
The Mandalorian is also the first Star Wars live-action TV series, and a major play to bring subscribers to Disney+. The company is hoping to build up a significant subscriber base — around 10 million subscribers by the end of 2020 — and having shows like The Mandalorian to bring people in is important to hitting that goal.
The Mandalorian will be available to stream when Disney+ launches on November 12th. The service will cost $6.99 a month or can be purchased as a bundle with ad-supported Hulu and ESPN+ for $12.99 a month.
