One of the most popular franchise of all time, Star Wars extends across movies, novels, comic books and animated series. Yet, there has never been a live-action Star Wars television series. That changes when the first episode of The Mandalorian is released Tuesday in conjunction with the launch of the Disney+ streaming service.

Already renewed for a second season, the series is set five years after the fall of the Empire in Return of the Jedi, and follows a Mandalorian bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) as he operates in the outer reaches of the galaxy, from from the authority of the New Republic.

During a recent press conference in support of the series, creator, writer and executive producer Jon Favreau (Iron Man, The Lion King) and director and executive producer Dave Filoni (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels) discussed why they chose to bring the live-action world of Star Wars to the small screen.

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Both Favreau and Filoni spoke to the way Star Wars shaped them in their formative years and how the promise of new technology, including streaming platforms and visual effects, now gives them the freedom to make a serialized Star Wars show. “As somebody who grew up with Star Wars and really having been formed around what I experienced when I was little with the first film,” Favreau began, “there was some aesthetic to it that I really gravitated to. And my whole taste in movies was probably formed in a big way from seeing George Lucas’ original film. And I learned about cinema through the lens of that film…

“So to come back and return to [Star Wars] with the freedom that this new [Disney+ streaming] platform affords, because there’s nothing to compare it to, nothing has been on TV -- other than the Holiday Special -- and the idea of telling a story over more than just a couple of hours told every few years, opens us up to this novelization of story. And a return back to the roots in many ways of the Saturday afternoon serial films that my parents’ generation grew up with, with cliffhangers, adventure. And drawing from that type of style of storytelling lends itself really well to what we’re tackling here.”

Filoni expanded on Favreau’s comments, adding, “I think as a kid growing up, you watch Star Wars, you think ‘I would watch this every week.’ And as television got more and more genre over the years… you were always waiting for a moment where you thought that the images on television were as good as what you were seeing in the theater. But there was a big separation when I was a kid. And now I think it’s gotten so close and it’s one of the [reasons] we can make something like [The Mandalorian], because technology has advanced.”

Favreau was particularly excited to be able to create The Mandalorian’s ongoing story because of the way it will enable him to engage and start a dialogue with the audience. Unlike a movie, he’s hoping that the conversation with fans will become a vital part of the series as it moves forward.

“It’s fun not to have a preciousness in the way we’re telling the stories because… we’re coming back to you next week with another one,” he explained. “And so to engage the audience in a way that I enjoy being engaged with the shows… where it’s bigger budget, it has a lot of the qualities and aesthetics of a film but a novelization of the serialized storytelling. To me that’s where it really opened up a lot of freedom and opportunity where we don’t feel like we’re repeating or copying anything else that people have experienced from Star Wars.

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“Also part of what’s fun about this, and with this new service, is that everybody wherever they are if they have the service they’re seeing it first… But it’s also nice to have… everybody experience something at the same time -- which is what I really loved about watching, like, Game of Thrones -- is that there’s a sense of ‘what’s going to happen this week?’... Now of course the service isn’t available everywhere yet….

“But for us there’s a really fun dialogue that we’re looking forward to that we usually normally get only at the conventions where you get to show it, people get to react and then you get to talk about it and it gets us excited as filmmakers… and I’m happy it’s being released at a rhythm because it gives us a chance, although we’re not able to react in what we’re doing [in Season 1] because all those episodes are done, it certainly will inform what we’re doing the second season...”

The promise that both Favreau and Filoni see in a live-action Star Wars series reflects the promise Star Wars creator George Lucas saw in streaming and serialized television. According to Filoni, “That’s one of the dreams that [Lucas] had. Even when I worked with him on Clone Wars, he would talk about the future being streaming. The future being episodic, serialized Star Wars.”

Created by Jon Favreau, The Mandalorian stars Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Emily Swallow, Omid Abtahi, Werner Herzog and Nick Nolte. The series debuts Nov. 12 on Disney+, the same date as the streaming service's official launch.

NEXT: Star Wars: There May Be More Than One Mandalorian in the Disney+ Series