Credit: Inside the MagicLong before he was tapped to direct the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), James Mangold revealed he “more than flirted” with the idea of making a Star Wars movie allegedly focused on infamous bounty hunter Boba Fett—something Lucasfilm’s President has adamantly denied in the past.
The fifth and final Harrison Ford-led Indiana Jones installment is currently gearing up for its theatrical run, as the adventure flick is scheduled to arrive next month. And in a recent promotional piece for Variety, its director, James Mangold, shared some interesting tidbits about his history and future with Lucasfilm.
Indy aside, Mangold was announced to be directing a movie set in the galaxy far, far away at this year’s Star Wars Celebration Europe, which will explore a new era never before seen in Star Wars canon: the Dawn of the Jedi. The story will, at last, break from the Skywalker Saga in favor of traversing the early origins of the Force and how users came to wield the mystical power.
Plot details remain scarce, but the Dawn of the Jedi film could prove to be the most exciting of the three announced at Celebration, including Dave Filoni’s “Mando-Verse” crossover event and the Daisy Ridley-led Rey spinoff movie.
However, Mangold collaborating with the Star Wars universe is hardly a new concept, and according to his latest interview with Variety, he “more than flirted” with the idea of making a “one-off spaghetti Western” starring Boba Fett, presumably with Temuera Morrison in the leading role.
While Mangold didn’t explicitly namedrop the legendary bounty hunter first introduced in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) in the article, it did quote the director as he explained how Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy approached him about a potential Star Wars project, leading to his Dawn of the Jedi movie.
During production on The Dial of Destiny, Kennedy reportedly asked Mangold if he was “still interested” in exploring the galaxy far, far away, to which he responded, “Yes, but it seems like everything you’re developing is continuing forward.”
The director then claimed that he pitched “a Ten Commandments about the dawning of the Force,” adding, “It is basically, for fans, a kind of religion. What is it to have found this power and not even understand what it is?”
After explaining how his Dawn of the Jedi project came to be, the Variety piece also quoted Kennedy herself, who said, “[James is] pretty fast — he’s already got the basic treatment laid out in his head,” adding that once the Hollywood writers strike is over, “He has every intention of wanting to move this forward very aggressively, and we want to support that.”
The Indy director acknowledging and seemingly confirming past rumors that he was working on a Boba Fett film is particularly eyebrow-raising, especially when considering that Kennedy flat-out denied similar whispers of a similar project in 2021, telling Empire Magazine, “Jim Mangold never worked on a Boba Fett story.”
Mangold’s remarks directly contradict Kathleen Kennedy’s denial that a Boba Fett movie was ever in the cards, which, as we all know, was scrapped in favor of making The Book of Boba Fett TV show for Disney+. A similar decision was also made with the Ewan McGregor-led Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries, which was initially intended to be a movie trilogy.
Why Lucasfilm made this particular decision to skip a theatrical release in favor of creating the Robert Rodriguez-directed series remains unknown, but one can only assume Kennedy gave The Book of Boba Fett the green light after the success of The Mandalorian in an attempt to expand the brand’s Disney+ catalog.
Oddly enough, the Indy 5 director’s comments are just the latest in a concerningly long line of other filmmakers who have come out with similar stories of their own, oftentimes confirming they were once involved with a Star Wars project, only for Kathleen Kennedy to deny it ever existed, or for Lucasfilm to scrap it altogether.
Famously, Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017) director Rian Johnson was strongly rumored to be helming an unknown Star Wars trilogy before the movie was even released, with initial comments from Kennedy seeming to suggest that Johnson’s films were going to be among the first projects released after Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (2019). However, Kennedy claimed that the movie is still “not in active development,” in addition to Wonder Woman (2017) director Patty Jenkins’ ill-fated Rogue Squadron.
Weirdly enough, Kennedy also denied Marvel boss Kevin Feige’s rumored Star Wars project ever having existed earlier this year. According to the Lucasfilm President, she and Feige “never discussed” an idea for his Star Wars film, and the reports of Feige developing such a project were only announced by the press and the online “fandom,” despite Disney’s Chief Creative Officer, Alan Horn, confirming Feige was developing an untitled Star Wars movie in September 2019.
This, on top of the latest news of Mangold’s since-omitted Boba Fett film, has caused many fans to wonder: what’s really going on behind the scenes at Lucasfilm?
For now, the answer remains foggy. But hopefully, we’ll get some more clarification in the near future as Disney and Star Wars continue to solidify their creative strategy and release windows moving forward.
Would you like to have seen a James Mangold-directed Boba Fett movie? Let us know in the comments below.