When The Book of Boba Fett was revealed within a mid-credit scene in The Mandalorian’s second-season finale last year, it wasn’t just audiences that were surprised. According to a new feature by The Hollywood Reporter, most of the people who worked at Disney+ were also taken by surprise by the announcement.
The surprise reveal was made all the more confusing by the fact that it came just a week after Disney had revealed a packed slate of new Star Wars content, including Mandalorian-adjacent shows like Ahsoka and the now-canned Rangers of the New Republic. In a new interview with Book of Boba Fett showrunner and director Robert Rodriguez, THR digs into why, and how, this massive secret was kept.
“Even Disney didn’t know we were going to drop it like that,” Rodriguez explained–though notably top executives and business affairs at Disney were still kept in the loop. “I got to see the inner workings, and [Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni] kept this a secret from everybody.”
Not only were the creative team surprisingly empowered to keep such a big secret from the rest of the company, they’ve also reportedly been given a good amount of creative freedom when it comes to making the Boba Fett spin-off–a fact that can potentially be attributed to the huge success The Mandalorian has seen so far.
The Book of Boba Fett is premiering on Disney+ on December 29, with plenty more secrets to be unravelled. While a few trailers for the upcoming show have been revealed, Rodriguez says that the footage that’s been used so far is limited in scope, coming exclusively from the first half of the first episode.
“We can’t use the second half of the first episode because it gives so much away,” he teased.
