We’ve only got about a month and a half left until The Mandalorian & Grogu arrives in theaters. As is typically the case for blockbuster films, the marketing campaign is well underway. Today, we have a new behind-the-scenes video (credit: IGN) in which director Jon Favreau and stars Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver talk about the cornucopia of imaginative aliens featured in the movie.
Favreau kicked things off by expressing his longstanding admiration for the creature designs in Star Wars movies:
“To me, Star Wars has always been about creatures, and I think it dates back to when I saw it when I was a kid. It all felt unified in this world, made the world even more compelling.
“We really wanted to bring an assortment of droids and creatures to this movie.”
Near the video’s end, Favreau elaborated on the variety of methods the production team used to create the non-human characters. Few viewers will likely be surprised to see a mixture of practical miniatures, puppets, and animatronics featured alongside CGI. After all, Star Wars has used quality puppetry and makeup to portray aliens since the original trilogy. In later productions, cutting-edge motion capture brought characters like Jar Jar to life, which in turn helped VFX artists working on other projects to bring Gollum, Groot, and others to our screens.
“We’re embracing a lot of tradition, bringing in all sorts of creative disciplines. You use all these techniques to ground things, to make you feel like you’re in a real place with real characters even though you’ve never seen these creatures or these droids before. It all works together, and Star Wars is unique for that.”
(L-R) Grogu and Creature in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU. Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm. © 2026 Lucasfilm Ltd™. All Rights Reserved.
This being a story about Din Djarin and his adopted son, the cast couldn’t help but take a moment to reaffirm their love for young Grogu as well. As series and film lead, Pedro Pascal says:
“I could get a little emotional talking about Grogu. That deep emotional connection exists in the way that the original Star Wars characters existed for me as a kid.”
The announcement that screen legend Sigourney Weaver would be joining the Star Wars universe helped bring even more attention to The Mandalorian & Grogu. The acclaimed actress has spoken before about her fandom of Mando’s co-lead, and she reiterated that here:
“All I see is his little face. You cannot but fall in love with that little face.”
We’ll all be seeing Grogu’s face on the big screen when The Mandalorian & Grogu starts playing in theaters on May 22, 2026.
Eric has been a fan of Star Wars ever since the age of five (or so) when his parents sat him down in front of a TV with pizza and a Sprite and showed him the original trilogy. He keeps trying to convince more fans to read the amazing 1980s Star Wars newspaper comics by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. When he’s not reading, watching or playing Star Wars media, he’s often enjoying other great fantasy and science fiction sagas or playing roleplaying games with his friends.