James Mangold reveals the pitch for his Star Wars movie

One of the biggest announcements to come out of Star Wars Celebration 2023 was that James Mangold will be directing a new Star Wars movie about the origins of the Jedi and the Force. The movie will take place 25,000 years before the events of A New Hope.

Even though this is Mangold’s first Star Wars movie, he nearly directed another movie for the franchise years earlier. According to Variety, Mangold had “more than flirted” with making a Boba Fett movie at one point. While this collaboration didn’t work out, Mangold instead went on to direct Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

When the Dial of Destiny was in production, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy asked Mangold if he would still be interested in developing a Star Wars movie. Mangold was interested, and described his pitch to Kennedy, which sheds more light on what his upcoming movie will be about:

"“A ‘Ten Commandments’ about the dawning of the Force. It is basically, for fans, a kind of religion. What is it to have found this power and not even understand what it is?”"

Mangold’s pitch emphasizes that the movie will heavily focus not just on the dawn of the Jedi, but on the dawn of the Force. Many Star Wars fans and many characters in a galaxy far, far away take the Force for granted as it has always been an ingrained part of the universe.

This new movie will force the audience and the characters to not take the Force for granted as it explores what happened when the Force was originally discovered. Mangold’s pitch teases the fascinating possibilities of how different individuals and groups react to discovering the incredible power of the Force, a power they don’t even understand.

Exploring this through the lens of a biblical epic is a compelling choice. As the Force builds faith for some and challenges faith for others, it will lead to the creation of the Jedi Order.

Mangold’s movie is exciting because it feels different than any other Star Wars movie while exploring some of the franchise’s most familiar and important elements. It is taking place so far in the past that even Yoda won’t be born as he is only 900 years old when he dies in Return of the Jedi, and yet the events in this movie will inevitably go on to shape Yoda and the future of the Force and the Jedi Order.

The intersection between faith and the Force has been recently explored in Phase II of the High Republic publishing initiative, not only with the Jedi, but with the anti-Force cult known as the Path of the Open Hand, and the many Force-related groups on Jedha, including the Guardians of the Whills, the Church of the Force, and the Brotherhood of the Ninth Door. Mangold’s movie takes place thousands of years earlier and will focus on different characters, but it sounds like there will be similar themes.

Every new tidbit revealed about Mangold’s movie makes it sound even more exciting. While the movie is years away from being released, you can watch Mangold’s first Lucasfilm movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, when it releases in theaters on June 30.