Dave Filoni Talks About His Star Wars Projects and Transitioning From Animation to Live-Action

Fans of the great animated series Star Wars: Rebels were stoked to hear that co-creator of the show Dave Filoni was returning to make his live-action Star Wars: Ahsoka story at Disney+. He’d left a huge piece of story open-ended when the animated series wrapped, without a word as to whether fans could expect to see a resolution.

Now that we know what he had up his sleeve, the folks over at io9 recently asked Filoni if that was actually the plan all along. He responded:

“That’s an interesting question. I would say that, you know, because of working with George, I saw a possibility of working in live action where I’d never seen it before. I didn’t know if that was something for me. But after working with him for so long and the way he taught me and then Kathy [Kennedy] coming into the company, one of the first things she and I talked about was, ‘Is there potential for me to get exposure to live-action and what does that look like?’ And so, of course, that was right when we began producing Rebels. The most important job I had at the beginning of this whole transition of Lucasfilm and Disney was to get that show up and running and to make sure that’s a strong title for us coming out of the gate. But, you know, as I was watching J.J. [Abrams] and Rian [Johnson] and Gareth [Edwards] and all these different people coming in and exploring live-action, I was able, thanks to Kathy, to get exposure to that type of production and what that’s like. And so it was incredibly exciting and interesting.

“I mean, I love animation. I love what I do there, but I think creatively as an artist, you have to be constantly pushing yourself into new ways of telling your story or expressing yourself through [different] mediums. And it became something that I was interested in. I just had no idea if I’d be good at it. It’s different.”

Filoni explained that The Mandalorian, created by Jon Favreau, opened new doors for their type of style, and new Star Wars storytelling.

“There are similarities in the production pipeline Jon was working with. Thanks to his work on Lion King and Jungle Book, there was a lot of crossover with what he was developing in animation. And so for me, it was a little more of a natural fit where I could get confident with an incredibly talented crew.”

While all of this is very cool backstage info, Filoni had yet to answer the question. Did he ever consider that he’d get to continue the story of Rebels in live-action as opposed to animation?

“At the time that I did the epilogue in Rebels, I had an idea of what this story would be. And it was definitely... so all of that, to just answer the question, I would say ‘Yes.’ It was definitely an option in my mind that, wow, this could be live-action if I go forward with this.”

“But there were a lot of things in that ‘if.’ Which was can I tell the story as well? What does that look like? What’s the budget like? Who’s going to play these characters? There are so many unknowns. But it was definitely on the table as well as just continuing in animation.”

So why live-action over animation?

“You have to decide what’s best for the story. And I think, we found, you know, whatever my story is about [in] Ahsoka, I’m very pleased.”

“And, you know, I didn’t know Jon would be doing Mandalorian at the time when I did that epilogue. That was all in motion, but I didn’t understand Ahsoka’s role in it, certainly. But I do know this time period because I grew up with a lot of Expanded Universe material in it. And so I think that’s also been an influence on what the future holds for everyone existing post-Return of the Jedi.”

The limited series Ahsoka is set to be released sometime this year on Disney+. Are you pumped to see where her story goes?