Background
Filmmaker Jon Favreau, director of The Mandalorian & Grogu, has long been an advocate for using emerging technologies in film production. His work on The Lion King (2019) used VR headsets for pre-visualisation, and The Mandalorian TV series brought Industrial Light & Magic's StageCraft LED volume into mainstream filmmaking. For Lucasfilm's first theatrical Star Wars release in seven years, Favreau extended that approach to a different problem: framing IMAX-aspect shots on a conventional film set.
The deployment
Speaking at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in April 2026, Favreau revealed that he had used Apple Vision Pro throughout production as his primary tool for previewing IMAX-aspect framing on set. The director's challenge was that traditional production monitors cannot replicate the experience of watching a shot on an IMAX screen — and The Mandalorian & Grogu features over 49 minutes of expanded aspect ratio sequences shot specifically for IMAX and other large-format theatres.
To solve this, Disney developed a custom Vision Pro application that placed Favreau inside a simulated IMAX cinema, enabling him to view takes at theatrical scale and full aspect ratio while lining up shots. According to subsequent reporting by 9to5Mac, Vision Pro became the director's sole on-set viewpoint into how IMAX framing was being composed.
Hardware and software
- Headset: standard, unmodified Apple Vision Pro
- Application: bespoke in-house Vision Pro app built by Disney; described by Favreau as "a little bit of a software build on top of it" leveraging consumer-facing technology in an industrial capacity
- Function: places the director inside a simulated IMAX auditorium to preview live or recorded takes at full theatrical aspect ratio
The film was shot entirely in California — primarily in the Los Angeles area, including soundstages associated with Manhattan Beach Studios — between June and October 2024.
Wider context
Favreau used the CinemaCon stage to make a broader argument: that consumer XR and gaming hardware now innovates faster than dedicated professional tooling, and that filmmaking can benefit from adopting it directly. He noted that the same production also used gaming hardware to drive its pre-production motion capture and pre-visualisation pipeline. The Mandalorian & Grogu releases in cinemas on 22 May 2026.
