The timing of the announcement of Jon Favreau’s new Star Wars live-action TV series has been met with harsh criticism on social media on International Women’s Day. Disney and Lucasfilm took another big step forward in the Star Wars universe Thursday with the announcement that Favreau would be executive producing and writing a live-action TV series that will be featured on Disney’s streaming service, which is launching sometime next year. While no specific details were offered about Favreau’s series, it’s the third live-action Star Wars project announced by Lucasfilm since November, when the studio first announced that Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson was developing a new Star Wars trilogy that would be set apart from the Skywalker saga. Then, last month, in another surprise announcement, Lucasfilm said Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were also hired to write and produce their own Star Wars film series. Still, while Favreau is a tried-and-true Disney talent (as director of the live-action versions of Jungle Book and the upcoming Lion King) and is part of the Star Wars family with a cameo role in Solo: A Star Wars Story, the announcement of the filmmaker creating an upcoming Star Wars TV series is experiencing backlash because of its timing. According to THR, a pair of film journalists in addition to fans are ripping the timing of the reveal because it happened on International Women’s Day. IndieWire film critic Anne Thompson was the most prominent of the voices slamming Lucasfilm’s announcement, calling it “Bad PR timing.” Thompson also says: “Women have a tough time getting the experience they need to compete for plum jobs like this. Even few men boast the array of proven skills — writing, acting, directing, VFX — that Jon Favreau has. Hollywood needs to give more women chances to build that toolset.”
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