James Mangold DID flirt with a Boba Fett movie after all. Mangold also says he views his upcoming Star Wars and Swamp Thing movies as standalone films. The director is currently promoting Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and whilst speaking to Variety about that film, the trade also got some comments from Mangold about Star Wars and DC. It was announced that Mangold was writing/directing a Star Wars movie set within a new Dawn of the Jedi era. Said to be 25k years before the events of The Skywalker Saga.
There had been many rumors previously that Mangold was set to direct a Boba Fett movie. Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy claimed that movie never really came to anything. However, the report from Variety confirmed Mangold was at one point flirting with this movie.
With “Star Wars,” Mangold had “more than flirted” years earlier with making a Boba Fett movie that would have been a one-off spaghetti Western in the vein of Sergio Leone. (Lucasfilm turned it into the Disney+ series “The Book of Boba Fett” instead.) So while in production on “The Dial of Destiny,” Kennedy asked him if he was still interested in exploring a galaxy far, far away. “I said, ‘Yes, but it seems like everything you’re developing is continuing forward,’” he says. He pitched “a ‘Ten Commandments’ about the dawning of the Force,” he says. “It is basically, for fans, a kind of religion. What is it to have found this power and not even understand what it is?” Kennedy pounced.
“Jim’s pretty fast — he’s already got the basic treatment laid out in his head,” she says. Once the writers strike is over, she adds, “He has every intention of wanting to move this forward very aggressively, and we want to support that.”
Swamp Thing
As for Swamp Thing, Mangold stresses that he’s not interested in making franchises. He views his Swamp Thing, and his Star Wars movie as standalone movies, not just adverts for more to come. It was announced and confirmed that Mangold will direct Swamp Thing. A movie firmly set within the new DCU being created by new DC bosses Safran and Gunn.
“While I’m sure DC views ‘Swamp Thing’ as a franchise, I would be viewing it as a very simple, clean, Gothic horror movie about this man/monster,” he says. Mangold had been “toying for years with the idea of making a kind of Frankenstein movie,” he adds, so when James Gunn and Peter Safran took the reins at DC last fall, Mangold “put in a friendly call” to suggest himself. “Just doing my own thing with this, just a standalone.”
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I think what Mangold is saying, is that whilst there may be more Star Wars movies or Swamp Thing movies that follow on from what he created, those won’t be him. Mangold just doesn’t want to be trapped doing the same thing over and again.
“I don’t put myself in one bin in the record shop,” he says. “Is he country and western or jazz? Is he rock ’n’ roll or is he soundtracks? What the fuck is he?” He laughs. “To me, sticking within one lane, I don’t know whether I’d keep learning.”
So James Mangold DID flirt with a Boba Fett movie and his Star Wars and Swamp Thing movies will be standalone. Any thoughts you have about Mangold’s or Kennedy’s comments, please let us know below.
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