Director Robert Rodriguez has been speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about The Book of Boba Fett and what might be on the cards afterwards for the Spy Kids director.
Speaking of Boba, Rodriguez says that the character “invites a whole world from the underworld in with him. Things turn up you don’t expect, you see things we couldn’t believe we got to do,” he says. “Every episode has big surprises.”
Rodriguez also spoke of working with 60 year old Temuera Morrison, (who also played Boba’s father Jango in the Star Wars prequels) and 58 year old Ming-Na Wen “You never feel like they’re an older cast; they’re so youthful and energised,” Rodriguez says. “Tem and I work out together — he really is Boba Fett.”
“And for Wen, I would design whole sequences just to end on her and the look she would give Boba because she’s so badass. Tem knows this is his moment and she knows this is her moment, and when you get actors like that, they go for it and it’s palpable.”
Rodriguez also discusses how George Lucas was a mentor to him. The two met when Rodriguez was sound mixing at the Skywalker Ranch. “George said, ‘You should check out these digital cameras I’m using’ and showed me some greenscreen tricks — and that’s what got me into shooting digital,” Rodriguez says. “He was a mentor at a stage where I went from doing films like From Dusk Till Dawn and Desperado to doing [the pioneering all-greenscreen-filmed] Sin City.”
As Rodriguez tells it, his move into digital filmmaking eventually led to him being hired to direct James Cameron’s long-planned Alita: Battle Angel in 2019, a live-action anime adaptation that was widely praised for its CG work. “Jon (Favreau) saw Alita and that got me into Mandalorian,” Rodriguez says. “But the only reason I started doing high-tech filmmaking way back when, in Austin of all places, was because of George (Lucas).”
Looking forward, Rodriguez has recently finished filming an action-thriller, Hypnotic, starring Ben Affleck. He’s also developing a modern-day, female-led Mask of Zorro reboot directed by his sister, Rebecca Rodriguez. A much-speculated Alita sequel also is still possible. “Jim (Cameron) and I talked about it recently, and we’re still very interested,” he says. “I told him, ‘Let me deliver Boba and then let’s figure out a pitch.’”
While we wait for more news about Alita: Battle Angel 2, check out our guides to the best science fiction movies and the best anime movies.