Latest The Mandalorian Episode’s Script Was Only 19 Pages

The latest episode of The Mandalorian, “Chapter 14: The Tragedy,” saw the triumphant return of the bounty-hunting Boba Fett for the first time since 1983’s Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, but director Robert Rodriguez noted that the exciting return was light on narrative details and heavy on action, with the 32-minute episode’s script being only 19 pages. A typical rule of thumb in how a script length translates into live-action is that each page equals a minute of screen time, which means things fell on Rodriguez’s shoulders to fill out the minimal script with more than a dozen minutes of exciting action.

“The script was much shorter than the episode. The script was, like, 19 pages so that suggests 19 minutes,” Rodriguez recently confirmed to Collider. “I added a lot of action to this [episode]. I even asked [series creator] Jon [Favreau], I said, ‘Is it okay that my script is only 19 pages? Because I cut really fast and it’s probably going to end up being 16 minutes. Do we need to add more pages?’ and he goes, ‘No, that’s what you’re here for! You need to fill that out.’ I said, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll try and make that battle longer.’ So that’s where that extra battle came from.”

Rodriguez added, “I know my tendency is to cut things pretty tight. If I have a 100-page script, it’s a 90-minute movie. So I had a 19-page script [and] I thought, ‘Whoa! I’m gonna run out of things to do, so I added a lot of action.”

From his earliest filmmaking efforts like Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn and up through his big-budget spectacles like Sin City films and Alita: Battle Angel, Rodriguez has regularly wowed audiences with the action he can convey, regardless of any production limitations.

Ever since Boba Fett’s seeming demise in Return of the Jedi, fans have wanted more adventures for the character, with a number of books detailing how he managed to escape his demise and continue his escapades. While we witnessed a young Boba Fett in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, the tease at the end of “Chapter 9: The Marshal” was our first canonical glimpse at the character after his presumed death, as previous novels are now part of the “Legends” corner of the franchise. It’s clear that Lucasfilm was more interested in his return being bombastic instead of being full of exposition, with upcoming episodes sure to shed more light on the character.

New episodes of The Mandalorian hit Disney+ every Friday.

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