James Mangold has been a busy man recently, making the normal press rounds in promotion of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Taking the helm from Steven Spielberg, Mangold became just the second person to direct a movie in the storied franchise, but he’ll also be jumping into another of George Lucas’s creations: Star Wars.
Years ago, Mangold had been collaborating with Lucasfilm on a potential Boba Fett spinoff movie (the movie was never made, but the studio created The Book of Boba Fett instead). Kathy Kennedy then hired him to replace Spielberg on Dial of Destiny, and naturally they wound up talking Star Wars too. It was officially announced earlier this year at Celebration that Mangold will be directing an upcoming Star Wars film, set in the era of the dawn of the Jedi, about the origins of the Order and the discovery of the Force.
So as Mangold has been doing various interviews in recent weeks, it’s no surprise that Star Wars has come up. Here are four things we’ve learned recently about that project.
1. The movie might not include the actual name “Jedi”
When Mangold and Kennedy talked about the Star Wars franchise, Mangold’s pitch was, as he described it to Variety, “a ‘Ten Commandments’ about the dawning of the Force. He then added that, “It is basically, for fans, a kind of religion. What is it to have found this power and not even understand what it is?” The movie will explore the discovery of the Force and lead to a better understanding of it, and because of that, we won’t be seeing the formalized religion or order that we’re used to.
Which means that we might not even hear the word Jedi in the movie at all.
“I don’t wanna make any guarantees one way or another,” Mangold said on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast (h/t Game Rant), “but it will be before Jedi, meaning you might be experiencing something that might become Jedi. Despite the fact that other people make movies other ways, I don’t tend to think people brand themselves before they’ve actually found themselves. So you don’t come up with a name for your organization.”
He’s right about that, as these brands and names tend to come down the road… but they do tend to come from somewhere, meaning the word Jedi might still be uttered without it being an official title or anything. Especially because that will be a key connection point in marketing the film. Nonetheless, Mangold’s comments are making it very clear that this will be a movie entirely different than any we’ve seen before.
2. The movie will thematically connect with the upcoming project about Rey’s New Jedi Order
Lucasfilm is developing several standalone stories set in vastly different eras, but they’re also telling stories in a Star Wars galaxy that’s all connected. So even though Mangold’s film will be entirely different, don’t think it will be entirely disconnected from the rest of the saga. Kathy Kennedy told Games Radar recently that it will connect with the upcoming movie about Rey’s New Jedi Order.
In a sense, those stories couldn’t be any more different: one is set earlier than any Star Wars story we’ve ever heard, and the other is set further in the future than any Star Wars story in the current canon. Yet both of them will dive deeper into the Force, and it’s in this way that we can expect to see some connective tissue.
“It was something that Jim [Mangold] immediately sparked to, and I think it’s a really nice compliment to what we’re doing with moving into the future with Rey, and then understanding a bit more of where this all came from,” Kennedy said. “Because it will be at the heart of creating the new Jedi Order, so to get a real sense of where that might have began with the dawn of the Jedi could be pretty cool.”
3. A movie about the origins of the Force has been considered for a while
Mangold’s pitch to Kennedy was about a biblical epic tracing the discovery of the Force, and she was on board. Perhaps part of the reason she greenlit the idea, though, was because it was a theme that had come up before. “That’s come up a lot,” Kennedy told Games Radar, “from the moment I stepped in and George brought me into the company, there’s been a lot of interest in that.”
Now obviously that’s a far cry from it actually having been done, but the idea has been kicked around for a while it seems. And that makes sense, given the fact that Lucasfilm has actually been quite selective on what stories are told that are set too far in the past. That’s always been an indication that they had considerations of exploring it further, and while this is going back earlier in the timeline than most expected, it could set the stage for the rest of what we’ve learned about the Force and the Jedi in this franchise.
As with any idea, a director and writer are needed to bring it about, and Lucasfilm found such a person in Mangold. When he pitched the idea, one that had been ruminating in the minds of executives for a while, it seemed like an obvious fit.
4. Mangold will work “very aggressively” on the movie once the writer’s strike ends
So Mangold, who will both direct and write the movie, will soon be turning his attention to Star Wars. The ongoing writer’s strike means that he’s not currently working on the script, but once that strike is resolved it sounds like he’s going to dive in.
“Jim’s pretty fast — he’s already got the basic treatment laid out in his head,” Kennedy told Variety. “He has every intention of wanting to move this forward very aggressively, and we want to support that.”
That’s certainly encouraging, but what is unclear is when exactly we should expect to see this movie on-screen. It’s been widely believed that the Rey-centered film will be the first one out of the gate for this new theatrical era of Star Wars, and then there’s also the Dave Filoni-led movie culminating The Mandalorian stories. When exactly Mangold’s film will be coming is still up in the air, but it’s good news that he’s excited and ready to begin working on it with more focus soon.
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