Andrew L. Jones knows a lot about the Star Wars universe. He’s served as the production designer for the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, as well as Ashoka and The Book of Boba Fett. But earlier in 2026, he took on his biggest task yet and worked as the production designer for Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu.
The film sees Mando get into trouble with the infamous Hutts after a bounty mission gets “messy.” No spoilers here, but with what the Hutts had been secretly planning, there was no way the mission could have ended well. So Mando and his newfound allies at the New Republic, find themselves in a life-or-death scenario.
From there, the film becomes a classic Star Wars adventure with X-wing dogfights, giant creatures, a ragtag group of allies, and the nefarious Empire, who continues to assist underworld leaders like the Hutts in an attempt to reclaim power.
To celebrate the debut of The Mandalorian & Grogu on Disney+, Jones chatted with ShowSnob to talk about what it was like to make the film, taking the leap from a series to a movie, and whether fans can expect more Mando in the future.
Since you worked on The Mandalorian as well, I’m curious to know if you found that working on a movie brought new challenges, or if it felt different from a show?
Jones: Yeah, it was actually surprisingly different. We developed a process for the show that became really refined over the years and moved very fast. When you make a show, it has to move really fast because there’s a lot of content to create. But in a way, it’s “smaller” content. Obviously, the show had some very big scenes and set pieces, but it’s all in a very contained scale.
The movie was a lot bigger. Sure, it has a shorter runtime, but it was just one after another of massive, really complicated sets. It’s a movie, so everything had to be bigger! But obviously, it’s tons of fun to get the opportunity to create these huge sets. That forest set [the planet the Hutts have settled on] was just massive. We were building that set for weeks before we got it just right. On a TV show, you don't get the time to work on things of that scale.
I was actually thinking about that as well, because I loved the huge sets and scenes in this movie. I’m obsessed with walkers, so when we get that opening scene with the AT-ATs, I just loved it. My personal opinion is that you can never have enough walkers.
Jones: I actually remember when we built the interior body of the AT-AT for those scenes. We even built a flexible neck and head that were mounted on air casters so it could move back and forth. Just the size of the body of an AT-AT is staggering. When it was done, I brought Jon [Favreau] in when it was all up and working, and he was shocked by the scope of the thing.
It was really fun to build that and to just go inside an AT-AT and see what’s actually inside it. Me and my colleague Doug Chiang were researching it, and there’s not a ton of info available about what exactly is inside an AT-AT. We had to do some digging, including playing some of the video games, to discover what info was out there so far. Our ideas had several iterations, thinking about what are they carrying, how do they secure it, and what are the people doing inside? Are there seats in there? But those are all really fun problems to solve.
Something that I also loved about the effects in the movie is that it had a great combo of new and old. Personally, I love the janky, old, herky-jerky effects of retro Star Wars. Something about it feels so good. In Mando & Grogu, we get this combo of super hi-def, intricate CGI, like the walkers, but then we also get a lot of that old-school puppetry feel with characters like Grogu. How do you balance that?
Jones: Jon loves the practical effects, and in Star Wars, they look great and they work fine. You can look at things and go; that could probably be done better with special effects, but in this franchise, practical effects are part of the legacy, and fans love it, so you can really lean into that. And honestly, there’s something really charming about the puppeteering that goes into characters like Grogu. It’s complicated; Grogu takes about four people working together, but it's worth it.
With CG, there are subtle things you can do to make it great. Like the splash of the mudhorn’s foot in the mud. With that sort of stuff, if you don’t get it right, it doesn’t look good, and I think sometimes visual effects don’t quite go to those lengths and capture the more nuanced stuff like that. Whereas with practical effects, that all comes for free. Like the dust on Grogu’s ears. When you’re doing it for real, that’s all there naturally. Also, Grogu got a little bit dirty throughout the film after a long time shooting in the jungle. But that's accurate to how it would actually be, so it works. What I love about Star Wars is that we bring together the best of VFX with practical effects.
Ok, final question: Can fans expect more of Mando in the future?
Jones: I can’t speak to that. All I can say is that I’d love to do it. We love the characters in the franchise, and we know he’s a popular character, so why not, right?
The Mandalorian & Grogu is streaming now on Disney+
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