Star Wars: The Mandalorian Sneak Peek Trailer Released Online

The gun-slinging outlaw known only as the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) comes under fire in a special sneak peek trailer premiered during Monday Night Football on ESPN. The exclusive sneak peek, released ahead of the premiere of the first live-action Star Wars series launching alongside the Disney+ streaming service on Tuesday, features new looks at the so far unnamed character played by Werner Herzog and IG-series bounty hunter droid IG-11 (voice of Taika Waititi), who are joined in the series by ex-rebel shock trooper Cara Dune (Gina Carano), Ugnaught Kuiil (voiced by Nick Nolte), Greef Carga (Carl Weathers) and assassin Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen).

"The first live-action Star Wars series is unlike anything audiences have seen before on any platform and it's a strong indication of the quality in the storytelling that will define Disney+," Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger said during Disney's fourth quarter earnings call, where Iger reported screened footage from the Dave Filoni-directed premiere episode received an "extremely positive reaction" that is "driving tremendous buzz around this extraordinary series ahead of its debut on Disney+."

Despite reported costs of $12.5 million to $15 million per episode, series creator Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man and The Lion King, borrowed inspiration from franchise creator George Lucas' 1977 original low-budgeted Star Wars when setting the tone for his gritty series set post-Return of the Jedi.

"For Star Wars, the question was how do we make it feel like Stars Wars, how can I tell a story set in this particular time…what's this gritty world?" Favreau told Variety. "The original Star Wars movies were a bit more intimate, character-driven. In many ways, this follows the structure of a television show in that we don't have an endless budget and it's served by the scale of the original films which isn't the big, huge blockbuster movies you see on the big screen all the time. We are using technology that makes best use of that scale and part of what we're exploring is using game engine, real-time rendering."

After the stories of Jango and Boba Fett, another warrior emerges in the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic....

The first episode of The Mandalorian launches alongside Disney+ on Nov. 12. The remaining seven episodes will then roll out through Dec. 27.