Star Wars: The Mandalorian Showrunner Jon Favreau Explains the E.T. Inspiration for Baby Yoda

Star Wars’ first live-action television show, The Mandalorian on the Disney+ streaming service, is up for 15 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. The series almost immediately won the hearts and minds of longtime Star Wars fans with the introduction of The Child, known informally as “Baby Yoda.” Speaking to Deadline, producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni revealed that the Child came from Filoni’s drawing of E.T., the title characters from Steven Spielberg’s iconic 1982 movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The artwork of Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo was also in the mix, specifically the Sistine Chapel painting “The Creation of Adam.”

“Dave had done a sketch of kind of a Michelangelo/E.T. moment, and that was a source of inspiration,” Favreau explained. “Then, Doug Chiang and the whole art department started generating drawings of it, and the Legacy [Effects] people built it.”

The producers also discussed how The Mandalorian was the right show to bring Star Wars into live-action television. “It’s a shift, for sure, and something that I was interested in for a while. I really got interested in, you know, seeing if I could do it from working with George [Lucas] and listening to his stories and his experience, and from the way he taught me how to, you know, shoot animation, because we were doing it in kind of a virtual sense, as well, with our animation programs that he was creating to tell The Clone Wars,” Filoni said. “So a lot of what Jon [Favreau] was doing when I saw him shooting Jungle Book, but even more so, Lion King, was very relatable to me as far as technique and technology, from what George and I had been doing in Clone Wars. So [Lucasfilm head] Kathy Kennedy and I, we’re always looking for a good bridge for me to try to, you know, change mediums, and this was, to be honest, a very perfect fit and a great environment, and I gained a great mentor and teacher in Jon here to shepherd me through the process of live-action.”

The first season of The Mandalorian is now streaming now on Disney+. The Mandalorian Season Two premieres on Disney+ in October. The Emmy Awards ceremony broadcasts on September 20th. More live-action Star is on the way, including an Obi-Wan Kenobi Series, a Rogue One prequel, and a series from the creator of Russian Doll.