As Skeleton Crew’s marketing campaign ramps up and promises a return to pure, old-school swashbuckling adventures in live-action Star Wars, we’re starting to learn more about the creatives’ experiences making the show and how they first connected with the long-running franchise.
That second trailer, cover of Peter Schilling’s ‘Major Tom’ in Huttese included, sure was fantastic. So, the conversation surrounding the show, which arrives after The Acolyte’s cancellation this summer, has been heating up in a big way over the last few weeks.
Empire Magazine recently published an interview with Skeleton Crew co-creator Jon Watts (of Spider-Man fame) and directors David Lowery (The Green Knight), Jake Schreier (Thunderbolts*), Bryce Dallas Howard (The Mandalorian), and Lee Isaac-Chung (Twisters). Fan site Star Wars News Net collated most of it, and there are some fragments worth highlighting in there for sure. And no, the eccentric Daniels (Everything Everywhere All at Once) weren’t available for this chat.
Howard revealed that co-creators Jon Watts – who’s also directing – and Christopher Ford did “a radio play” of each episode before handing over the scripts and pieces of concept art to the directors, aiming to set the tone they’d envisioned for the show beforehand while letting every filmmaker put their own stamp on it. “It was immensely helpful — it set the pace and the tone, and allowed us to have consistency of character,” she added.
Meanwhile, Lowery, who’s also worked for Disney with 2023’s Peter Pan & Wendy (also starring Jude Law), started rambling about his favorite Glup Shittos, which makes him a certified Star Wars sicko: “I loved the characters who were vaguely visible in Jabba’s Palace, but [still] got action figures. ‘Prune Face’ — in the Rebel briefing room — was the same on the action figure, but their species was a Devaronian. I also loved Amanaman — do you remember that guy? This ten-foot tall yellow character who’s barely in [Return of the Jedi]. You really have to squint to see him. That’s one of the mint-in-package action figures I’ve been trying to track down, to complete my collection.” Look, I already wanted to see him tackle a Star War, but now I truly love the guy. “I was an Ewok kid, but probably that makes me very basic,” added Schreier. It’s okay, Jake. I think Ewoks are cool too.
On how they got into the franchise, Chung said he started with Return of the Jedi, as he’d grown up in an immigrant home in Arkansas and his family barely knew Star Wars. As for Watts, believe it or not, he’d kind of missed the Star Wars craze until he played the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games: “My bigger intro to the world was through the video games, like X-Wing and TIE Fighter. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m familiar with this Darth Vader guy.’ Then when the Special Editions came out, there was so much about the restoration, and getting behind the hood of how movies were made. I was getting really interested in filmmaking. That part of it really drew me in.”
Watts not having a ‘Star Wars childhood’ isn’t a huge surprise, as the 43-year-old filmmaker would’ve been a little over 10 around the time those games came out, a period during which no new Star Wars movies were coming out despite the Expanded Universe going wild meanwhile. That’s certainly an interesting first contact with the universe, and it probably defined his understanding of the galaxy far, far away’s possibilities far from the Skywalkers. Looking at the show he came up with alongside Ford, which can be described more or less as The Goonies but Star Wars, I’d say it all clicks together.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’s two-episode premiere (with the other six episodes arriving weekly afterwards) will hit Disney+ on December 3.