He’s the man of the moment with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny arriving on 28th June, but Indy isn’t the only Lucasfilm project director James Mangold is working on as he’s also developing a dawn of the Jedi era story set for release over the next few short years. Speaking with Gizmodo, Mangold explains how his latest collaboration with Lucasfilm came about.
“Well, I’ve talked to [Lucasfilm] before and even worked a bit before on other projects,” Mangold told io9. “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,” he continued. “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.”
So it seems like it was Mangold himself who looked at the big picture of what Lucasfilm was doing with Star Wars, wanted to join in the fun, but didn’t want to be encumbered by other stories, which has been an issue for some of the current output. His solution? Go back to day one. And what an idea it could be.
However, when we followed up and asked for the status of the project, especially since he’s been mentioned in regards to Swamp Thing at DC and is prepping a Bob Dylan movie, he said the question was “impossible” to answer. It seems it’ll happen when it’s ready to happen.
