THE MANDALORIAN Creator Jon Favreau Explains Why It's Important to Listen to Audiences
Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni put together a super talented crack squad of filmmakers to help bring the first season of The Mandalorian to life. The fans responded to that series with explosive positivity, and we are all eagerly awaiting Season 2!
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Favreau opened up about the fans and audiences and why it’s important to listen to them as they move forward with the story. He explained:
"You put something out in the world, and then it echoes back at you. You have to listen. It's not a one-way street. It's a two-way street.”
That might be one of the best explanations that I’ve heard about why listening to the audience is important. I have always felt that these storyteller’s should listen to the fans, that they should be allowed to tell the story that they want to tell. Favreau went on to use his time doing improve work as an example saying:
“You have to feel the energy of the audience. But when you come from comedy — and when I was doing improv back in Chicago — that's it: You have to read the room, you have to feel the room.”
That puts it in a way that totally makes sense to me. The filmmaker went on to say:
“The fact of the matter is, as much as we love working on Star Wars, we love even more making Star Wars for other people. And when other people are excited by it, dig what we're doing and are appreciative, that's as good as it gets for us.”
Keeping the Star Wars fans in mind while making this series was a priority for Favreau. On the latest episode of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, he said:
"Because we're not George Lucas ... we're just filmmakers who grew up watching [Star Wars]. Just because we say it doesn’t mean it's cool… we're definitely thinking, 'How is this going to play with the fans?'"
The second season of The Mandalorian is currently in post-production, and Favreau and Filoni are also developing Season 3. There’s a lot of cool stuff to look forward to seeing in the upcoming seasons. As you know, Season 2 is going to introduce a lot of great characters from The Clone Wars and Rebels series.
Pedro Pascal stars in the series as a Mandalorian bounty hunter who becomes the guardian of a mysterious creature known only as The Child. Season 2 will continue their journey while they are being hunted down by Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito).
They will be joined by new cast members that include Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett and maybe Captain Rex, Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka, Katee Sackhoff as Bo-Katan, Timothy Olyphant as Cobb Vanth, and Michael Biehn in a yet to be revealed role. It’ll be interesting to see what other characters might be introduced in the series!
The Mandalorian Season 2 will feature episodes directed by Jon Favreau, Carl Weathers, Dave Filoni, Peyton Reed, Robert Rodriguez, and Bryce Dallas Howard.