Is the future of Star Wars on the small screen?

Next month sees the release of The Rise of Sky­walk­er, the final film in the cur­rent Star Wars tril­o­gy. It’s the last time fans will see the saga unfold on the big screen for at least two years – a life­time for Hollywood’s con­vey­or belt franchises.

But it’s not the only Star Wars sto­ry com­ing our way. On 19 Novem­ber Jon Favreau’s The Man­dalo­ri­an will seri­alise the adven­tures of a boun­ty hunter (played by Pedro Pas­cal) in the imme­di­ate after­math of Return of the Jedi. The lat­est trail­er revealed a dif­fer­ent tone to what the recent films have offered: grit­ti­er, char­ac­ter-dri­ven dra­ma with 100 per cent more Wern­er Herzog.

The show is the flag­ship title for new stream­ing ser­vice Dis­ney+, with high-pro­file names such as Tai­ka Wait­i­ti and Nick Nolte on board. While famil­iar­i­ty with the Star Wars brand all but guar­an­tees The Rise of Skywalker’s suc­cess, The Man­dalo­ri­an seems to be gen­er­at­ing more excite­ment among hard­core fans of the fran­chise. With Dis­ney CEO Bob Iger open­ly pon­der­ing the future of Star Wars, could tele­vi­sion pro­vide the answer?

Disney’s attempt to mim­ic Marvel’s blue­print with annu­al Star Wars instal­ments stut­tered very ear­ly on. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi proved divi­sive, and although the film’s $1.3 bil­lion box office hard­ly rep­re­sents a dis­as­ter, the drop from The Force Awak­ens’ $2 bil­lion sug­gest­ed that Star Wars fatigue was set­ting in. This was con­firmed five months lat­er when Solo: A Star Wars Sto­ry became the first film in the series to lose mon­ey. It was clear that after four films in two-and-a-half years, a new Star Wars sud­den­ly no longer felt like an event.

Now, while movie exec­u­tives lick their wounds and work out where to go next on the big screen, The Man­dalo­ri­an has the chance to rede­fine what Star Wars means cre­ative­ly, and even to become the focal point of the series’ fan­dom. Its biggest appeal lies in the poten­tial to expand on the uni­verse of the Orig­i­nal Tril­o­gy, tak­ing audi­ences to its dark­er and more remote reach­es. Favreau has com­pared the show’s tone to Mad Max and Clint East­wood west­erns, and has spo­ken about want­i­ng to specif­i­cal­ly cap­ture the feel of the first act of A New Hope.

The direc­tor has also allud­ed to the cre­ative free­dom that tele­vi­sion affords, telling The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, ​“you don’t have the same expec­ta­tions that a big hol­i­day release has, which to me isn’t that type of Star Wars that comes out of me. The type of Star Wars that I’m inspired to tell is a small­er thing with new char­ac­ters.” Free from the pres­sure of hav­ing to sell tick­ets, The Man­dalo­ri­an can con­cen­trate on devel­op­ing char­ac­ters and sto­ries with­out paus­ing for a train chase or deep space shoot out. A small­er, moral­ly ambigu­ous Star Wars promis­es some­thing very dif­fer­ent, lean­ing into the shades of grey that made The Empire Strikes Back so compelling.

If Favreau and Dis­ney get it right, we could see oth­er major fran­chis­es make the switch to stream­ing plat­forms. Mar­vel is already plan­ning to con­tin­ue the adven­tures of Hawk­eye, Fal­con and Scar­let Witch via var­i­ous Dis­ney+ series, while Ama­zon is hop­ing that the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings tril­o­gy will trans­late to their mega-bud­get show based on JRR Tolkien’s fan­ta­sy novels.

Who knows, we may soon see a Fast & Furi­ous show that goes back to the film franchise’s street rac­ing roots. Nao­mi Har­ris recent­ly revealed a Mon­eypen­ny spin-off movie was turned down by the stu­dio – so what about an episod­ic dra­ma cen­tred on James Bond’s long-serv­ing British Intel­li­gence ally? How about a pre­quel series based on how John Ham­mond came to build Juras­sic Park?

With the stream­ing arms race lead­ing to greater resources and cre­ative free­dom, the poten­tial for some of the biggest Hol­ly­wood prop­er­ties to become world­wide hit shows has nev­er been greater. Where once a TV spin-off was the sign of a fran­chise in decline, shows like The Man­dalo­ri­an could well end up teach­ing their cin­e­mat­ic cousins how to sat­is­fy an ever­more demand­ing fanbase.