While not much is known about the upcoming Star Wars series Skeleton Crew, its creator, Spider-Man director Jon Watts, told an interesting tale at D23 about his pitch to producer Jon Favreau that's full of Disney cross-franchise synergy.During D23's Lucasfilm presentation, Watts took the stage for a brief tease about Skeleton Crew, which provided a first-look image of star Jude Law standing in scarf-swinging swagger as the show's silhouetted supporting cast look onward in the background. Yet, as The Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit recounted on Twitter, Watts also revealed how he pitched the series to a resident creative fulcrum of Star Wars in The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau. It would seem that Favreau had Watts sized up for a Star Wars project and brought up the possibility while on the set of the Spider-Man movies, in which he portrays the Marvel Cinematic Universe character Happy Hogan. The director serendipitously said to Favreau, "Oh, we have a fully formed idea for what we would want to." The response immediately up-scaled the idea from maybe having Watts direct an episode or two.
Thus, the idea for Skeleton Crew was, surprisingly, born during the process of shooting his trilogy of Spider-Man films, although it doesn't seem that the director specified the actual film on which this arrangement was made. Watts, having made a breakout moment directing the 2015 crime thriller Cop Car, procured a plum position in the big chair for a groundbreaking cross-studio collaboration between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures to finally bring Marvel Comics' de facto mascot-level hero, Spider-Man, to the MCU.
The tenure, which would elevate star Tom Holland to household name status, would consist of Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) and conclude in spectacular, universe-clashing fashion with Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). Of course, Watts' Spider-Man run became a tremendous success and even made the concluding chapter No Way Home a record-smashing hit that grossed $1.9 billion worldwide, with the recent extended "More Fun Stuff" re-release putting the grand total past the $2 billion mark. Thus, with Favreau having spent time working closely with the visionary, the notion of a transition to Star Wars as the driving force behind Skeleton Crew -- which conveniently keeps him under the Disney umbrella -- was an arguable inevitability.
For now, barring the aforementioned D23-showcased image, much of Skeleton Crew's plot remains a mystery. The series' title clearly references its titular team, and Lucasfilm has vaguely teased it as "a galactic version of classic Amblin coming-of-age adventure films of the ’80s," which potentially positions Law's character as a paternal-type overseer to a titular team of youngsters. The description seems to evoke an idea that drove Netflix's smash-hit series, Stranger Things, into existence off the nostalgia-driven creative sibling force of Matt and Ross Duffer.
Thus, a pseudo-Stranger-Things concept might be seen as auspicious by Disney since a report from this past July claimed that the upcoming Star Wars serial endeavor is operating under a massive $136 million budget, which even dwarfs the $100 million initially thrown at fellow franchise offering The Mandalorian for its inaugural season.
Skeleton Crew is currently penciled-in for release on Disney+ sometime in 2023.
Source: Twitter