James Mangold on Developing a ‘Star Wars’ Film Without the Constraints of Existing Lore
Of the three recently-announced Star Wars films, perhaps the one that looks to be the most distinct is the new project by Logan director James Mangold, set 25,000 years before The Phantom Menace during an era dubbed as Dawn of the Jedi. (Whether this will also be the title of the film, remains to be seen.) As he is promoting Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, io9 asked him about his next collaboration with Lucasfilm, and the writer-director shared a few interesting insights.
First and perhaps most interestingly to those keeping a record of the various projects Lucasfilm has been developing over the years, Mangold confirmed he’s previously worked on Star Wars for a short period of time, possibly alluding to the Boba Fett film that was once reported and quickly shot down by Mangold himself and people at Lucasfilm. He then said that he was surprised that Lucasfilm were as excited to go back in the Star Wars timeline and tell stories unconstrained by lore as he was when he pitched the idea:
“Well, I’ve talked to [Lucasfilm] before and even worked a bit before on other projects. And I’m always interested in what’s going on there and have friends who work on other Star Wars projects. But I understood that much of what they were doing was kind of continuing the saga forward.
So when I mentioned to Kathy [Kennedy, Lucasfilm president] the idea that I had about going backward—really far backward—I was surprised that it excited her and the other wonderful people she works with at Lucasfilm. For me, it’s about, I want to be part of the saga, but I also don’t want to be holding so much lore in the air that you can hardly tell a story. And what I really wanted to do, what I told her, was just can we make a kind of the Ten Commandments of the Force, you know? A kind of origin story of how the Force came to be known, understood, wielded, and harnessed.”
With Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny about to premiere, it feels like we are living in Groundhog Day after the poor critical reception the film had during the Cannes Film Festival. Whether James Mangold will follow the path first walked by other filmmakers like Patty Jenkins, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Josh Trank, Colin Trevorrow, and even Rian Johnson of being announced as the directors of a new Star Wars film right before their next project receives with critical and/or fan backlash, we don’t know yet.
However, we do know that James Mangold is not working on Star Wars immediately next. He is supposed to shoot a Timothée Chalamet-led Bob Dylan biopic this summer, and according to reports, he would then start writing his Dawn of the Jedi movie by the fall, if the ongoing WGA strike allows it (as a guild member, Mangold is prohibited from working on scripts while the stoppage is going on). If everything went according to plan, the production schedule could potentially work for a 2027 theatrical release.
The next two Star Wars films are supposed to be the Daisy Ridley-led, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy-directed film that Steven Knight was typing away before the strike happened, and the Dave Filoni-directed New Republic culmination event. It is believed they are internally targeting a late 2025 and 2026 release dates, respectively, strike willing.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
