Star Wars: Skeleton Crew co-creator Jon Watts has revealed he originally pitched the idea as a film to Lucasfilm, after the release of 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, but his Marvel Studios commitments prevented him from moving ahead with the show. In the interim, streaming service Disney+ launched, providing Watts and Chris Ford an avenue to alter their concept and reimagine it as an eight-part series.
“Over time, [Jon] Favreau made The Mandalorian and Disney+ came into existence, so it evolved, as the Spider-Man movies were being made, into a show, and that gave us more time to explore the galaxy and get into this world of piracy and have a little bit more fun with it,” Watts told TVLine. “And once I finished the third Spider-Man movie [No Way Home], we could finally get to work making it.”
Skeleton Crew is hardly the only Star Wars project to benefit from the advent of Disney+. Obi-Wan Kenobi followed a similar path, beginning development as a spin-off moviebefore it was repurposed as a television miniseries. Even the critically acclaimed Andorwouldn’t have happened without the streaming service. Lucasfilm initially rejected Tony Gilroy’s pitch for the show before streaming made feasible.
Based on Watts’ comments, it sounds like the basic Skeleton Crew premise remained the same throughout the project’s development. Switching it from a movie to TV simply allowed him and Ford to dig deeper into the idea, a benefit of long-form storytelling. Expanding it to eight episodes gives the creative team plenty of time to flesh out the characters and their dynamic in a way that wouldn’t be possible in a film.
The two-episode premiere of Skeleton Crew debuts on December 2nd at 6pm PT (December 3rd at 2am GMT) exclusively on Disney+.
