Jon Watts & Chris Ford Discuss the Upcoming ‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’ & a Suprising Nod to ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’

‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’ is the name of an upcoming live-action series that will expand the Star Wars universe. The series is currently scheduled for a December 3, 2024 premiere on Disney+ and was created by the duo consisting of Jon Watts and Christopher Ford.

The series will follow a group of children, most likely Force-sensitive, who will have to go on an adventure if they want to return to their home planet, from which they got lost after a strange discovery.

The show stars Jude Law, with Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Robert Timothy Smith, Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Kyriana Kratter, Tunde Adebimpe, Kerry Condon, and Jaleel White rounding out the cast.

Recently, the duo behind the show Chris Ford and Jon Watts discussed the show with The Holofiles and revealed something surprising, you will be able to watch the show and understand it without being familiar with the previous works in the franchise. Ford explained that it was their goal to simply create an entertaining show:

Our aim is we want it to be for people who don’t know anything about Star Wars and just want to watch a good show, because it’s a great entry show, but we also want it to be for super fans like us, and we try to make it work on both levels.

Although ‘Skeleton Crew’ centers on four children, it’s not just for kids—it’s designed to appeal to adults as well. The show’s creators wanted to tell an exciting story filled with danger and adventure, set in the Star Wars galaxy. Ford mentioned that even as an adult, he would be excited to watch it, while also knowing it would be enjoyable for kids.

When we came up with the idea for the show, the main characters were kids, but we were just wanting to tell a story and the story was full of danger and adventure, because they were lost in the Star Wars galaxy.

So, you know, if someone else had been making it and I heard about it, I would definitely want to watch it as a grown adult man, but I also knew that it would be something I’d be excited to watch with my kids.

Jon Watts discussed his favorite scenes in the show and revealed that ‘Skeleton Crew’ will feature a reference to the ill-fated ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’

Watts and Ford discussed the significant effort put into recreating a tribute to the Star Wars Holiday Special, explaining that they couldn’t use existing footage due to its low resolution and incorrect angles.

They had to rebuild the entire scene from scratch, including re-creating costumes from the Lucasfilm archives, remaking the music, and re-choreographing an acrobatic routine. Though it turned out to be much more work than expected, they agreed it was worth it, with Watts calling it his favorite part of the project.

We thought we would be may be able to use some preexisting footage, but no. It was way too low resolution and it was the wrong angles- We had to create this moment from multiple angles, because you see it in various parts of the scene. So we rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. We had to dig up the original designs of the costumes, which were in the Lucasfilm archive…Get all the original specs.

We had to redo the music from scratch, because there was no copy of the actual score anywhere, so we had to rebuild that…It ended up being 20x more work than we anticipated, and our stunt coordinator is the main performer in it and he was able to re-choreograph the routine too, because it’s a very acrobatic routine…I will say, without saying what it is, which it is pretty obvious now, it was so much work and it was so worth it. My favorite part.

Source: The Holofiles

‘Skeleton Crew’ is set around the same time as ‘The Mandalorian’ because of Watts and Ford’s collaboration with executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni.

The show premieres on December 3rd on Disney+. Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!

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