When Disney’s streaming service — Disney+ — goes live in November, it will debut complete with the first-ever live-action Star Wars TV show: The Mandalorian. Set a few years after the fall of the Galactic Empire in Return of the Jedi, it follows a Mandalorian bounty hunter (Game of Thrones star Pedro Pascal) as he carves out a living on the outskirts of a galaxy that’s a lot less orderly than it used to be.
If you think the character’s description sounds a bit like Boba Fett — the infamous bounty hunter from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi — then you aren’t alone. Pascal himself thought he’d be playing Fett when he first met with showrunner and creator Jon Favreau. “I wanted to meet Jon Favreau,” Pascal told Disney Twenty-Three magazine. “I didn’t care what he wanted me to do. So we met in Jon’s office, which was covered with story illustrations from this show — and I noticed the Mandalorian, a Boba Fett-looking character, immediately. I thought to myself, ‘Oh, it’s amazing that they are finally gonna get into this character.'”
"Jon talked about the story, visuals, and tone. I thought it was amazing and finally asked, ‘Well, who am I?’ I’m pointing to different characters, creatures, and aliens in the concept art, and [Jon] just looked at me and said ‘You’re the Mandalorian.’ I was like, ‘WHAT? I get to play Boba Fett?’ He said, ‘No, he’s not Boba Fett. He’s the Mandalorian.’ I couldn’t have imagined a better moment."
It’s neat that Pascal seems like a Fett fanboy. Many fans — including myself — thought the show was going to involve Fett in some way. At one point, Disney was making a standalone movie about Boba Fett to be helmed by Logan director James Mangold, but it got dropped when Solo: A Star Wars Story underperformed at the box office. That could have been the source of some of the confusion.
But whatever Mandalorian Pascal is playing is different from Fett, despite the similar wardrobe. “Ultimately he wants to do the right thing,” Pascal said recently. “But his duties could very much be in conflict with his destiny and doing the right thing has many faces. It can be a very windy road.”
The Mandalorian hits Disney+ on November 12.
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h/t Comicbook.com