Disney is bringing a little bit of Star Wars to Super Bowl Sunday, with a new spot showing off The Mandalorian & Grogu.
But rather than a trailer, it’s a bespoke, 30-second ad from Mando director Jon Favreau. It features a gravely-voiced narrator who would be right at home celebrating Americana for a Ford truck commercial, but in this case, it’s Mandalorian and Grogu riding in a carriage powered by Tauntauns.
Disney hopes the cheeky, nostalgic spot will remind audiences of their affection for the characters that broke out more than six years ago in the TV series The Mandalorian for Disney+.
Favreau shot the spot in live-action, working with the Lucasfilm creature team and puppeteers, as well as ILM.
Pedro Pascal stars in the feature as Din Djarin, the reluctant steward of the Grogu, a Force sensitive being in need of guidance. Sigourney Weaver and Jeremy Allen White are among the cast for the feature, bowing May 22 in theaters.
Mandalorian & Grogu is the first Star Wars feature to hit the big screen in almost seven years, since J.J. Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker in December 2019. It comes at a new era for Lucasfilm, the company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas and sold to Disney in 2012. Longtime president Kathleen Kennedy stepped down last month, with Lucas protégé Dave Filoni and business executive Lynwen Brennan taking over the company.
Mandalorian & Grogu hails from Mandalorian creator Favreau, who directs the movie from a script he wrote with Filoni.
At Star Wars Celebration last year, Pascal recalled the life-changing first meeting he had on the show. “I’ll never forget the first day that I got to sit down with Jon and Dave in the writers room, and they showed me, wall-to-wall story illustrations of the first season of Mandalorian, without me even understanding who they expected me to play,” he recalled. “And I remember just seeing the greatest visual storyboards that I had ever seen, and knowing that people were going to lose their minds.”