Lucasfilm President and Chief Creative Officer Dave Filoni reflects on his time working directly with George Lucas and how he plans to take those lessons into a leadership position at the company, as an executive, collaborator, and a storyteller.
Talking to USA Today, Dave Filoni stated that he is thankful for all the people that he has worked with to reach the top:
“I’m very excited and feel very privileged to be in this position. I learned from the best – not just [George Lucas], but the people that were foundational to Lucasfilm during the prequel era, some from the original era.”
Of course, Lucas himself remains a major inspiration in his approach as a creative and how he plans to take the franchise forward along with a new generation of storytellers:
“He used to tell me things like ‘Dare to be great!’ – because when you do that, you’re really putting yourself out there, you’re taking risks, you’re taking chances. You’re Luke going down the trench run: ‘Am I really going to be able to do this?’ And you push through it, and you can do something amazing. I enjoy helping get the best out of everybody around me, and being kind of like a little Obi-Wan when people need it to help them understand the Force and guide them through this galaxy.”
Audiences have noted that Star Wars tends to lean toward the side of being self-referential and reliant on nostalgia in its storytelling, but Dave Filoni assured the interviewers that he is very much interested in helping new creators take things in interesting new directions:
“You’re always looking for new things, and I point out to people, when George made [The Empire Strikes Back], he didn’t just sit on what he did in A New Hope. He furthered things. I didn’t know there were [AT-AT] walkers. I didn’t know there was a city in the clouds. I didn’t know that Yoda existed. We’ve taken them for granted now. It’s a much more flexible galaxy, and a point of creativity, than I think people realize because they get so burrowed into all the facts and things that they believe in. Adding new stuff is just as important as honoring the past. You understand the great, giant shoulders you’re standing on when you get to work on something like Star Wars, but you also want to add your own page to it as you go forward. So I’m very excited about the future we have.”
Lastly, when asked about details tied to future plans, he remained as coy as he previously has:
“Oh, I have a lot of vivid plans, I’m sure you can imagine.”
The Mandalorian and Grogu – the inaugural effort released under the shared leadership of Dave Filoni and previous Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, who used the movie to pass the torch to Filoni as George Lucas once did to her – is now playing in theaters.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.