'The Mandalorian' Season 2 Will Not Be Delayed By The Coronavirus
Star Wars fans can put their The Mandalorian season 2 coronavirus concerns to rest, because Disney's new CEO Bob Chapek has promised that the upcoming season will not be delayed by the ongoing global pandemic. Read his comments below.
In an interview with CNBC, Chapek explained that while the coronavirus pandemic has impacted several of Disney's planned productions, there is still work that can be done before and after principal photography:
"We have a certain amount of inventory, particularly for Disney+, that is still fueling the machine. It's important to note, though, that pre-production, sort of the development phase, can still happen during these times of lockdown, and post-production can still happen. So it's only films that are mid-stream, right in the middle of production. Take, for, example, Mandalorian. Mandalorian was shot before COVID really hit. And so we've been in post-production and there will be no delay on Mandalorian. Same thing with Black Widow, which is coming out in November."
We all sort of assumed this was the case, but it's always nice to hear it publicly confirmed by the CEO of the company. The Mandalorian is a show that's particularly well-suited for this specific situation, too, since showrunner Jon Favreau and his team have been using their Stagecraft technology to film the series. That means that lots of the asset building and traditional post-production work is done before principal photography, so they don't really adhere to the typical path that a traditional production takes from inception to completion.
In fact, Industrial Light & Magic's Stagecraft tech (which you can read more about here, and see video of it in action) could end up being the saving grace for lots of other productions as the entertainment industry tries to figure out how to get back up and running again in the face of this pandemic. It certainly won't work for every production – I can't picture indies scraping together enough cash to be able to utilize it – but for the big-budget blockbusters, it seems easy enough to drop a convincing-looking background of an international destination behind your actors instead of paying for the entire filmmaking team to risk the dangers of extensive travel. (Plus, it would cut down on the costs associated with quarantining for days upon arrival.)
The Mandalorian season 2, which now has Katee Sackhoff on board to play a live-action version of Bo-Katan, is expected to debut on Disney+ in October 2020.