Disney CEO Bob Iger always has a lot on his plate, but over the past couple months a big part of his job has been ushering a whole bunch of new Star Wars content into the world: The Mandalorian, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, Star Wars: Jedi – Fallen Order, Star Wars Resistance season two, and this weekend’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, among numerous other titles across a variety of media.
On this week’s episode of Lucasfilm’s official news webseries The Star Wars Show, Iger sat down with co-host Anthony Carboni to discuss the future of Star Wars at Disney– including what fans can expect from the worlds of movies, television, and more from A Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Here’s a breakdown of what we learned from Bob Iger’s interview on The Star Wars Show:
- He didn’t know Time Magazine was creating the painting of him with Baby Yoda, but he jokes he considered including it in his Christmas cards and saying he had a sixth grandchild.
- “In many respects, we’re just getting started. It feels like we’re just starting to mine the full potential of what Star Wars is and what Star Wars can be,” he says about the future of the franchise at Disney.
- He says Disney+ was designed to use new technology to bring creative product directly to the audience, and compares that process to how George Lucas used technology to tell stories.
- He chose to make The Mandalorian as the flagship Disney+ launch title because he has great faith in Jon Favreau as a storyteller and someone who also knows how to use technology for the benefit of the audience.
- He only refers to Baby Yoda as “The Child,” but he also says he knows the character’s real name.
- He says it was worth preserving the secret of The Child, even if it meant having to sacrifice a Christmas season’s worth of merchandise sales.
- He loves that The Mandalorian is fresh and doesn’t feature any major returning characters, while simultaneously being steeped in the lore of existing Star Wars.
- Star Wars TV shows could become movies in the future (just as movies like Rogue One are becoming TV series), but he isn’t making any announcements just yet.
- “We’ll continue to tell [Star Wars] stories between now and whenever the next film is, and while we’re doing that we will work to find what makes the most sense to be released as a big-screen experience. There are a number of choices; there are a number of discussions; there are a number of very talented people.”
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in theaters now.