The 2019 D23 Expo is kicking off in Anaheim, California this weekend, and Friday afternoon brings the first of the event’s major panels. At 3:30 pm PT the Disney+ presentation will begin, giving fans the first look at several original projects launching on Disney’s upcoming streaming service in November. Of course, the most talked-about of all these projects is the tentpole series that will be available at launch, The Mandalorian, the first live-action Star Wars TV show.
Disney will be unveiling a trailer for The Mandalorian when the panel takes place, but the House of Mouse actually decided to start getting people excited a few hours early by releasing the first official poster for the series.
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The poster was revealed through a multitude of tweets from the various Disney account, including a new one that was launched specifically for The Mandalorian. The tweet accompanying the poster reads, “The Mandalorian, the first live-action Star Wars series, only on Disney+. Start streaming November 12.”
The Mandalorian stars Pedro Pascal as the titular bounty hunter and takes place on the planet of Tatooine, where Luke Skywalker was raised and first met Han Solo. It’s set shortly after the events of the original Star Wars trilogy.
The series hails from Jon Favreau, known for directing films like Iron Man and The Lion King, who has always been a fan of Star Wars and has long wanted to tell a story like this. In fact, Favreau wrote four whole episodes of The Mandalorian before even striking a deal with Disney and Lucasfilm.
“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,” Favreau said in a recent interview. “I had been thinking about Star Wars since Disney acquired Star Wars. When I was working on Lion King, it was a full-time job for a few of the years, but there was a lot of time when I just had to be available for three very focused hours a day. 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.
“That’s why it worked well for Disney. Plus, Disney+ is emerging and there’s an 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. The type of Star Wars that I’m inspired to tell is a smaller thing with new characters.”
The cast of The Mandalorian also includes Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Nick Nolte, Omid Abtahi, Emily Swallow, and Werner Herzog. In addition to Filoni, directors on the series will include Rick Famuyiwa, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Taika Waititi.
Are you looking forward to The Mandalorian? Let us know in the comments!