Dave Filoni

Dave Filoni was born on June 7, 1974 in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He grew up with Star Wars and read the Legends novels and books, including Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn. He went to the same high school as future Fennec Shand actress Ming-Na Wen.

In 2005 Filoni, joined Lucasfilm Ltd. as an apprentice to George Lucas. They developed the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series together, with Filoni working as supervising director. Many of the tools Filoni and Lucas developed were used to feed future live-action projects that Lucas wanted to do. Lucas taught Filoni the language of cinema, editing, and ways to tell a story. During the show's early development, the character who became the Jedi Ahsoka Tano was very involved in the black market and worked with Jedi without getting involved in the Clone Wars. She would try to prevent criminals from taking advantage of the war. Filoni and Lucas decided that including a Padawan was important, and Lucas wanted her to be Anakin Skywalker's Padawan.

As of 2005, the character was named Ashla, a reference to an early name for the light side of the Force when Lucas was developing Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. Filoni played with the idea of her being the same character as the Togruta youngling in Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones, but he realized the ages would not work. Lucas gave her the name Ahsoka, and she was one of the very first characters that Filoni drew when he was working at Lucasfilm. Ahsoka Tano's voice actor, Ashley Eckstein, often asked Filoni how her character's story would end, and he gave several different answers over the years. Some ideas held that Tano would die in the series. However, Filoni opposed the idea that Tano's story existed only as a smaller part of Skywalker's own: while Tano is indeed an important part of Skywalker's life story and his fall to darkness, with Filoni himself agreeing, he believed that, if Tano existed solely as another factor that pushed Skywalker to the dark side, she would have been included in the films.

When the Mandalorians were being developed for The Clone Wars, Filoni and Lucas looked at Mandalore in the Expanded Universe and decided to keep the broad strokes of their history. Lucas pointed out that the Mandalorians are currently pacifists, but he and Filoni agreed that cultures are capable of change.

Filoni made an appearance at Celebration IV on Sunday, May 28, 2007 with producer Catherine Winder in the Celebration Theater (Room 408AB), to discuss the beginnings of the new television series and reveal how The Clone Wars was being created. During San Diego Comic Con 2014, Filoni admitted that he knew about contradicting the Expanded Universe by establishing The Clone Wars as canon. In his defense, he said that they still included the Expanded Universe elements when they could. When Filoni and the crew were writing the story about Tano leaving the Jedi Order, they made it about her being pulled in different directions and becoming frustrated. They wanted to show young people that they can take a predetermined path or use the information to make their own choice. Filoni first teased the story of Tano leaving the Order in the "Obi-Wan Undercover" commentary track for Star Wars: The Clone Wars The Complete Season Four: he teased that a story in The Clone Wars: Season Five would help explain why Skywalker felt betrayed by the Jedi Order.

The Star Wars Rebels animated series was created by Filoni, Simon Kinberg, and Carrie Beck, with Filoni serving as one of the executive producers, writers, and directors. He voiced Chopper in the series, a role which was not revealed until the series finale. Filoni wanted Sabine Wren to be more colorful than other Star Wars characters, which was shown by her constantly dying her hair. He also wanted her to be a character that kids could get attached to. He named the character Gooti Terez after Andi Gutierrez, the digital communications manager for StarWars.com, host of Rebels Recon, and co-host of The Star Wars Show. Filoni set up a further story involving Wren and Ahsoka Tano for the end of the series.

Filoni wanted to see if Tano worked outside of animation, leading to the creation of the Ahsoka novel. He told Lucasfilm's publishing division that they should show people unaware of The Clone Wars and Rebels how popular the character is. Filoni served as an executive producer of the animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch. He asked Ming-Na Wen if she would want to reprise her role as Fennic Shand in The Bad Batch and she said she would love it. Filoni thought it would be neat if Shand encountered bounty hunter Cad Bane.

Around the debut of Star Wars Rebels Season Four, Filoni had hinted that he'd been exploring other forms of storytelling and learning from live-action directors. (He visited the sets and studied the productions of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi). After expressing interest in working in live-action, Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy had Filoni visit the film sets of the sequel and anthology films to study the work of their directors. He received particular help and encouragement from Rian Johnson.

Kennedy arranged a meeting between Filoni and Jon Favreau in Los Angeles in which they exchanged ideas and drawings for a Mandalorian show. Filoni combined his knowledge of Mandalorian history with Favreau's concept of a lone gunslinger. Favreau shared his idea for the Child, which caused a debate between the two because Filoni wanted to protect the mystery Lucas built around Jedi Master Yoda. One of the original drawings was drawn by Filoni and showed the Child's hand reaching out of a floating bassinet toward his burly protector. When Filoni started exploring the possibility of directing a live-action project, he asked Kennedy about how you know an actor is right, and she replied "You just know." Kennedy then paired Filoni up with Favreau on The Mandalorian, for which he serves as executive producer and has directed several episodes—his first venture outside the realm of animation.

In February, 2017, a Star Wars fan asked Rosario Dawson on Twitter if she would ever play Ahsoka Tano, and she replied that she would want to play her. According to Dawson, someone at Lucasfilm forwarded the reply to Filoni and he thought she would make a good Ahsoka Tano. Filoni and Star Wars then followed Dawson on Twitter, but nothing happened for a long time. Filoni kept loosely aware of Dawson's Marvel career and he watched interviews of her expressing excitement for the role. When he started working with Favreau, he would bring up Tano and say that Dawson was at the top of his list for the role. Eventually, Filoni and Dawson had a discussion about the show in which he revisited Dawson's casting and compared the actress' age with Tano's age, and he decided that the casting was feasible.

Filoni and Favreau did not want to include Tano in Season One because Filoni did not want to mess up Tano's portrayal, but it remained at the back of his mind. During early production of Season One, Favreau told Filoni that the Child's name would be Grogu, which made Filoni think of ways the audience could learn his name. He thought that Tano could learn Grogu's name by communicating through memories and experiences, and she could tell the Mandalorian and the audience. Filoni and Favreau knew they wanted Tano in the second season's story, so they started visualizing Dawson in the role, and art of the actress playing Tano was created. Near the release of the first season, Dawson got a FaceTime call from Filoni and Favreau, and they showed her visuals and concept from their plans for Season Two, including art of Dawson as Tano. They asked Dawson if she wanted to play Tano and she agreed. Filoni's ultimate goal was to give Tano her own television series.

Tano appeared in the episode Chapter 13: The Jedi, which was written and directed by Filoni. When Filoni penned the episode's script, he created Lang, an experienced gunslinger to go up against the Mandalorian. When he was writing the setting for the episode, he drew inspiration from the fires in Northern California where he lived. He thought the planet would be really haunting and have a foreboding feeling. When Filoni wrote the scene in which Tano reveals Grogu's history, he shaped it around when Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker about his father in A New Hope. He had to stop himself from having Tano call Grogu a "Yoda baby." Filoni pointed to Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings as a touchpoint for Tano, which factored into Dawson's portrayal of the Jedi. He talked about classic samurai films such as Yojimbo, and he described Tano as someone wandering the galaxy helping people in need.

Filoni debated having Dawson wear contacts, and she tried them on to show the difference it made. Dawson insisted on wearing contacts to match Tano's blue eyes. Filoni wanted Tano's facial markings to be subtle and look very natural instead of looking like face paint in The Clone Wars. When Dawson showed up on the set in costume, Filoni felt relieved that he would not need to worry about Tano, allowing him to focus on everything else. When Dawson noticed that the horns and headtails were shorter than in the animated shows, Filoni assured her it was necessary for stunts. Filoni knew the actress who plays the Magistrate would have to be someone who can instantly challenge Tano. Diana Lee Inosanto played the Magistrate, and Filoni found her skill and choreography experience to be a great advantage. Filoni felt that the episode had a good match-up of Tano and the Mandalorian against the Magistrate and her gunslinger. According to property master Josh Roth, Ahsoka Tano's white lightsabers kept getting bigger because of the batteries and receivers inside them. Filoni said the lightsabers could not look like that, so they ended up being powered by an external battery.

During the The Walt Disney Company's Investor Day event on December 10, 2020, Kathleen Kennedy announced that the Ahsoka television series will be written by Filoni and executive produced by Filoni and Jon Favreau. It was also announced that they will executive produce the show Rangers of the New Republic.

Filoni worked as an executive producer, director, and writer for The Book of Boba Fett television series. He felt it was important to include Mark Hamill in the process of portraying Luke Skywalker to make sure he is authentic. Filoni shared insights he learned from George Lucas while Hamill shared insights from his experience playing Skywalker.

During early production of the Obi-Wan Kenobi television series, Filoni attended a meeting with director Deborah Chow and propmaster Brad Elliott to discuss translating the animated Inquisitor lightsabers into realistic props. Filoni advised the propmaster to imagine the live-action came first, and the animated material was an exaggerated version of that. This allowed Elliott to keep the form factor of the props established in animation and to bring them in line with props made for human hands.

When Filoni was traveling on an airplane, he wrote little shorts, which he only let Carrie Beck and Athena Yvette Portillo read. They liked the stories and asked Filoni if he would like to make the stories. He agreed to work on the project, and Beck and Portillo found the resources and people to make the animated series Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi. Filoni enjoyed reconnecting with the animation team and working with Ashley Eckstein, Matt Lanter, and James Arnold Taylor again.

When Filoni was writing all of the episodes for Ahsoka, he worked on and connected several charts, outlines, and graphs. Jon Favreau enhanced the way Filoni writes by indicating things from the perspective of someone not deep in animation and Ahsoka Tano's history. After Filoni completed a draft, he would first send it to Beck, who worked with him on the project. Filoni and Favreau met actress Natasha Liu Bordizzo months after she sent a self-tape. After Bordizzo was cast as the Mandalorian Sabine Wren in 2021, Filoni and Favreau told her it would be great if she watched Star Wars Rebels, but they said the live-action version would always be a new thing that finds its own truth.

Ahsoka started production on May 9, 2022. Filoni oversaw the show and was on set every day. He started to understand that people who watched The Clone Wars as kids are excited about things they grew up with. Filoni wanted Tano to drive towards a goal instead of going on singular adventures. He felt that continuing the story of characters from Star Wars Rebels was the most honest thing he could do. At Lucasfilm's Studio Showcase at Celebration Anaheim, 2022, Filoni said that production on Ahsoka was going great, and he and Favreau played a video message from Rosario Dawson in her full costume from the show's set. At the Mando+ panel, Filoni and Favreau showed the first footage from Ahsoka and introduced Bordizzo as Wren in the series.

In a November 21 2023 interview after the release of Ahsoka, Filoni revealed he had been given the position of chief creative officer of Lucasfilm. In this role, he will work closely with Kennedy and veteran producer Carrie Beck.

An avid Plo Koon fan, Filoni dressed up as the Jedi Master for the opening of Revenge of the Sith, giving out candy to children queuing up to watch the film. Dave Filoni's office, as seen in the extra features on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars DVD, is filled with Plo Koon paraphernalia. He has a bust of Plo Koon's head, a model of Plo Koon's ship, an autographed portrait by the actor who played Plo Koon, a replica of Plo Koon's lightsaber on his desk, and his personal Plo Koon costume on display. Filoni also has a notebook-sized planner on his desk with Plo Koon's picture taped to the outside.