Jon Favreau: How Epic Games Helped Bring Star Wars The Mandalorian to Life

Star Wars is taking a big step this year by developing some live-action shows with Iron Man helmer Jon Favreau. What's interesting is, his show The Mandalorian has teamed up with Epic Games (Fortnite) to help bring the show to life. Talking to the Directors Guild of America, Favreau talks a bit about how they used the tech to bring the world of Star Wars to live-action television.

Favreau told DGA, "Since I wrote most of [The Mandalorian], I wrote it to fit within our volume, and in trying to keep the scale of it like the first Star Wars film, which was a relatively low-budget affair, even though the effects were spectacular."

Seeing that CGI is basically eating at the budget of television shows, Favreau elaborates on how they used video game tech to be able to use CGI more effectively with The Mandalorian. He elaborates:

"What's helpful now is that game engines that are built for gaming and drive VR are getting to the point where there's enough code in there to emulate all of these analog aesthetics that you would see when you were really moving a light around. So to some extent, we had it on Lion King—that was Unity on The Mandalorian, the stage set you visited me on—we ended up using an Epic game engine with these new Nvidia video cards for gaming. There's enough processing power to get all of these lighting effects so that you're actually seeing [it] in camera. You wouldn't have to explain to a DP, you could actually have him see it, so when I move the light, it reacts like they do in the real world. "

We don't really know what the final product of the show looks like as of now, but we are expecting to get a full panel for The Mandalorian during Star Wars Celebration this coming April 14. A lot of pressure is going to be on this show to deliver, not just for Star Wars, but for Marvel Studios as well, who are going to be making their own miniseries for Disney+ on the same scope as Mandalorian.

No release date has been set for Star Wars: The Mandalorian, but the show is expected to debut sometime later this year.

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