Star Wars' Jon Favreau Says The Audience Is Key To Telling A Story Across TV & Film

There's a great disturbance in the Force, of the awesome, Empire-overthrowing variety! "The Mandalorian" creator Jon Favreau didn't say much concerning the rest of Season 3, but plenty of juicy stories were unveiled at Star Wars Celebration. During Day 1, the first trailer for the highly anticipated spin-off to Favreau's Disney+ series was revealed. Yes, the "Ahsoka" footage dropped, and Favreau addressed the complexities of telling stories for both the sophisticated audiences of moviegoers and streamers.

"Audiences are very sophisticated now," Favreau told IGN during an interview at Star Wars Celebration. "And if they're invested in the characters and the stories, you can — you could — tell types of stories in one medium that you can't with the other. There are certain limitations you have with cinema because we're very, you know, we have a lot of narrative structure to deal with [in] the amount of minutes we do each season — and then multiple seasons. But with a movie, you have to make sure it all kind of comes to a head and resolves in that two-hour, hour-and-a-half period."

Favreau's been able to tell larger-than-life tales on "The Mandalorian" thanks to Disney+. And, as a result, the showrunner has essentially given audiences an estimated 320 minutes of "Star Wars" magic a season. Whereas, had he told the tale of Mando (Pedro Pascal) in theaters rather than on streaming, who knows if fans would have ever even seen Luke Skywalker's epic rescue sequence of Grogu in the post-"Return of the Jedi" world?

Jon Favreau was among the many talented creatives who appeared on Day 1 of Star Wars Celebration 2023. While word that Daisy Ridley is returning as Rey Skywalker set the internet on fire, arguably the most buzz-worthy news came when the trailer of "Ahsoka" dropped. The Disney+ series, which triumphantly brings the animated "Rebels" to the live-action world, will stream this August. And Favreau was quick to say that "Star Wars" fans are key to telling stories across streaming and film platforms.

"At a certain point, the rubber's going to hit the road in many ways," Favreau said during his sit-down with IGN. "And the fact that now audiences will accept a permeability between media, which I think has been, you know, with the 'Star Wars' films and with the Marvel films." Indeed, one of Favreau's crowning achievements came when he brought "Return of the Jedi" Luke Skywalker into the Season 2 finale of "The Mandalorian." 

Fans of the original films finally got to see a more mature Luke show off his fighting skills and Force abilities that audiences only caught a glimpse of in "Return of the Jedi." Skywalker's rescue of Grogu/Baby Yoda was the perfect marriage of film and streaming, and, hopefully, a taste of things to come. Favreau and the rest of the Lucasfilm teams heading the upcoming streaming series and the new trio of announced feature films should continue weaving these worlds together through mass media.