Filmmaker Jon Favreau popped up this week at Variety’s Entertainment & Technology summit where he offered some discussion about the live-action “Star Wars” TV series “The Mandalorian” which he is executive producing.

The series takes place five years after the events of “Return of the Jedi” and marks a welcome foray into the unknown with a fresh group of characters. Favreau enjoyably compares the series to the original George Lucas trilogy with its less blockbuster elements and more straightforward tone:

“For ‘Star Wars,’ the question was how do we make it feel like ‘Stars Wars,’ how can I tell a story set in this particular time…what’s this gritty world?. The original ‘Star Wars’ movies were a bit more intimate, character-driven. In many ways this follows the structure of a television show in that we don’t have an endless budget and it’s served by the scale of the original films which isn’t the big, huge blockbuster movies you see on the big screen all the time. We are using technology that makes best use of that scale and part of what we’re exploring is using game engine, real-time rendering.”

The comments come as Deadline reports that Julia Jones (“Twilight”) has been added to the cast of the series but her role is under wraps.

“The Mandalorian” premieres on the Disney+ streaming service when it launches November 12th.