James Mangold Provides New Details About His Announced Star Wars Film, Says He Wants To Create The Ten Commandments Of The Force
John F. Trent
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Director James Mangold recently provided new details on his recently announced Star Wars film claiming he wants to create the Ten Commandments of the Force.
James Mangold attends the U.S Premiere of Lucasfilms’ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, sponsored in part by Dolby, Swaine and Hamilton at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, CA on Wednesday, June 14, 2023
(photo: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages)
Mangold was announced as the director of an upcoming Star Wars at Star Wars Celebration back in April with a Lucasfilm press release detailing the film “will take audiences deep into the past, telling the tale of the first Jedi to wield the Force and harness it as a liberating power in an era of chaos and oppression.”
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – War #1 (2012), Dark Horse Comics
Now, in a new interview with Gizmodo, Mangold revealed more details about what his plans are for the film.
First, he detailed he had been in talks with Lucasfilm in the past, but their focus had primarily been on continuing where Lucas left off in Return of the Jedi and moving forward as seen with the Disney Sequel Trilogy.
Mangold said, “Well, I’ve talked to [Lucasfilm] before and even worked a bit before on other projects. 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.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 14: (L-R) Mads Mikkelsen, Harrison Ford, James Mangold and Phoebe Waller-Bridge attend the Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny U.S. Premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on June 14, 2023. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
He then went on to explain his pitch for this announced Star Wars film, “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.”
“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,” he continued. ” 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.”
While Mangold provided details on what he hopes to create through the film, Gizmodo noted that when he was asked about what the status of the film was, Mangold relayed it was “impossible” to answer that question.
John Derek as Joshua and Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), Paramount
Fandango’s Erik Davis recently revealed that The Walt Disney Company shifted many of their film’s theatrical release dates. There are currently three Star Wars films on the release calendar with release dates of May 22, 2026, December 18, 2026, and December 17, 2026.
It’s unclear what films will be released on the dates or if any Star Wars films will be released as Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company have seemingly gotten in the habit of announcing Star Wars films, scheduling dates, and never actually making the movies to be released.
Erik Davis Twitter
Nevertheless, along with Mangold’s film, Lucasfilm announced two other films that are expected to get theatrical releases. The first appears to be titled New Jedi Order and sees the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey. The film is supposed to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy.
The press release detailed the movie will be “set 15 years after the last events of the Skywalker Saga.” It will also tell “the story of rebuilding the New Jedi Order and the powers that rise to tear it down.”
Daisy Ridley as Rey in Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker (2019), Lucasfilm
Kennedy provided more details during an appearance on Entertainment Weekly’s Dagobah Dispatch podcast where she relayed, “Well, as we move into the future space, which this story is about 15 years outside of Rise of Skywalker, obviously, we realize that post-war, post-First Order, rise of the new Jedi Order, we left Episode IX with Rey making a commitment to Luke Skywalker that she would rebuild the Jedi Order and so here we are. We are ready to do that.
“And it took a lot of discussion because obviously we’ve been developing stories in different spaces, and television has been a big focus of our attention right now. But there’s still so much interest in what happens after Rise of Skywalker. So we are excited to be doing that now,” she concluded.
LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: (L-R) Daisy Ridley, Kathleen Kennedy and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy attend the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 attends the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Disney)
The other film will be helmed by director Dave Filoni.
The press release stated, “Dave Filoni will orchestrate the escalating war between the Imperial Remnant and the fledgling New Republic. Alongside producer Jon Favreau, they will bring together many of the threads of the Star Wars original series in a cinematic event.”
Scene from Lucasfilm’s AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
It’s highly likely the film will feature Grand Admiral Thrawn given Filoni informed Empire Magazine in May that he believes Thrawn is the big bad of the New Republic era.
He was asked by the outlet, “Do you see Thrawn as the big bad of this New Republic era? Is that how you’re positioning him?”
Filoni responded, “Definitely, in my eyes. When Timothy Zahn wrote Heir To The Empire, Thrawn became this very iconic villain, because he was different than anything we’d seen before. He wasn’t another helmet-wearing, lightsaber-wielding bad guy, you know?”
It’s also likely the film will incorporate characters from The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Skeleton Crew, and Ahsoka.
The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+, © 2020 Lucasfilm Ltd. &TM. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of James Mangold’s comments about what he has planned for his Star Wars film?
NEXT: James Mangold Confirms He Is Writing And Directing DCU Swamp Thing Movie
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