So, you may recall a few weeks back we reported that Iron Man director Jon Favreau, currently overseeing the excellent The Mandalorian on Disney+, has joked that he wanted to make a new Star Wars Holiday Special.
However, it seems it may not have been a joke after all.
The Holiday Special aired around Thanksgiving in 1978 and saw Han Solo – played by Harrison Ford (the whole cast returned for this bizarre chapter in the Star Wars saga) – trying to get Chewbacca home to his family to celebrate Life Day, a universal holiday similar to Thanksgiving, but being chased by the Empire.
The show itself is a wonderful piece of awful with singing (Carrie Fisher bizarrely sings the Star Wars theme at the end (see below)) and a strange animated segment in the middle that actually features the first appearance of Boba Fett and is widely considered the only part worth watching.
Here’s Carrie Fisher’s sing-a-long:
And here’s Boba Fett’s first appearance:
But, anyway, the show only aired once with George Lucas – who foolishly had nothing to do with it – saying he wished he could acquire every copy go it and burn it.
Where were we? Oh, yes, Jon Favreau.
So now Favreau seems to genuinely have an idea for a new Holiday Special – Life Day is actually mentioned in The Mandalorian’s first episode – saying he “would definitely be interested in doing a holiday special.”
“And I’m not going to say who I would be interested in,” he says, “But one of the people is the member of the cast in an upcoming episode of the show. So we’ll leave it at that for now.”
Wait, so is he joking? Nope.
“I’ve been thinking about it. It’s ready, the ideas are ready. I think it could be really fun. Not as part of this, but there’s an excitement around it because it was so fun and weird, and off and not connected to what ‘Star Wars’ was in the theater. ‘The Mandalorian’ cartoon, the Boba Fett cartoon, from the holiday special was definitely a point of inspiration for what we did in the show.”
It looks like Favreau has really given this some thought and, given how well The Mandalorian has been received so far, I wouldn’t rule out this actually happening.
What say you all?
Source: Variety
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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