When Bob Iger returned as Disney CEO, he prioritised box office revenue over boosting Disney+ subscription numbers by pulling the plug on his predecessor's seemingly endless streaming offerings.
With that, a planned Moana TV series became the theatrically released Moana 2. Much has also been said about The Mandalorian Season 4 evolving into The Mandalorian and Grogu, a movie that arrives in theaters next month following a three-year absence for the show.
While the series hadn't started shooting yet, the prevailing belief among Star Wars fans seems to be that filmmaker Jon Favreau was tasked with taking his Season 4 scripts and condensing 8 episodes into a 2-hour movie.
Not so. While the entire season had been written, Favreau went back to the drawing board to tell a vastly different story from the one he had planned for streaming.
"You can't just take those scripts and turn them into a movie," he told SFX (via SFFGazette.com). "There were a lot of characters, it assumed you'd watched the whole show, and it was teeing up what was happening moving into [the second season of ] Ahsoka. It was about Grand Admiral Thrawn and following the larger storyline [of this era of the Star Wars timeline]."
"This is a completely different medium," Favreau continued, "so I had to start from scratch, essentially. There were certain things I wanted to pursue, like the idea of Grogu being the Mandalorian's apprentice. As long as you understand the archetypes of this hardened warrior with their vulnerable young apprentice, you’ll know these characters well, even if you've never seen the show."
"But there's still a lot of Star Wars in there," the writer and director added. "You're going to see where things are going [in the wider universe], but that doesn't diminish from the experience of watching it as a standalone film."
It's hard not to wonder what might have been, and the idea of Din Djarin and The Child dealing with a returning Grand Admiral Thrawn and his undead army of Stormtroopers—assuming that's where things were heading—is undeniably exciting.
Now, the duo will be kept separate from whatever Dave Filoni has planned for Ahsoka Season 2, though the door may be open for them to make a cameo appearance in the Disney+ series. We wouldn't bank on it, though, because it seems that Disney's hope is for The Mandalorian and Grogu to launch a new big-screen franchise.
In The Mandalorian and Grogu, the evil Empire has fallen, and Imperial warlords remain scattered throughout the galaxy. As the fledgling New Republic works to protect everything the Rebellion fought for, they have enlisted the help of legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his young apprentice Grogu.
Directed by Jon Favreau, the movie also stars Sigourney Weaver and Jeremy Allen White. It's produced by Jon Favreau, Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni, and Ian Bryce, with music composed by Ludwig Göransson.
The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives in theaters on May 22. Check out a new poster for the movie below.