James Mangold Is Directing A Star Wars Movie

It’s been revealed that James Mangold is going to be directing a new Star Wars movie, which is a pretty surprising bit of news. This news was revealed at tje Star Wars Celebration event in London, which is taking place today and over the weekend.

Fans attending the event learned that Mangold is set to direct a movie about “the first Jedi in the earliest past.” This means that Mangold will be providing fans with a look into the foundations of the Jedi religion, which have been hinted at in previous films but never explored in any particular depth.

There had been rumours that Mangold was going to be writing a Boba Fett spinoff movie. However, that movie ended up being scrapped. The film was first announced back in 2018 and it was going to be directed by Josh Trank and Kathleen Kennedy quickly cancelled the project after his Fantastic Four movie was released and ended up being a total disaster.

However, Kathleen Kennedy claimed during an intereview with Empire Magazine, Star Wars News Net, that they never actually got very far with the Josh Trank project before it was scrapped. Here’s what she had to say on the matter:

“There really was virtually no previous development. We never got very far with Josh, quite frankly, because we never developed anything specific with him.

Lucasfilm’s President, Kennedy, then added the following:

And Jim Mangold never worked on a Boba Fett story.

James Mangold is going to be directing a new Star Wars movie

Credit: Lucasfilm

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It seems as though Lucasfilm is looking to get back to making movies and spinoffs without them having much (if any) impact on the other eras that are being developed by other filmmakers. I think this is the best way to move forward. It seems as though most of these upcoming Star Wars movies will be standalone ones.

As with Logan, Mangold will be playing in a shared sandbox but doing so separated by time and space, with stories that are unlikely to change or be changed by other instalments.

Of course, it may be hard to get too attached to any news coming out of Star Wars Celebration since the last few years have seen cancelled projects from Colin Trevorrow, Kevin Feige, Taika Waititi, and Patty Jenkins (and those are just the ones we know about).