Filmmaker James Mangold’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” hits cinemas this weekend, his first officially produced feature at Lucasfilm which comes ahead of a “Star Wars” tentpole film he’s doing for the studio.
However, it isn’t the first film he worked on for the studio. Five years ago, Mangold was hired to direct a movie about the bounty hunter Boba Fett – a project he was to co-write with Simon Kinberg (“X-Men: Dark Phoenix”).
Mangold was reported to have taken over that job after “Fantastic Four” director Josh Trank famously exited due to creative differences with Kinberg.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, Mangold confirmed he was developing ideas for the film. When asked if it would have differed from what we got with “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett,” he says:
“At the point I was doing it I was probably scaring the s— out of everyone. I was making much more of a borderline R-rated, kind of single-planet spaghetti Western. The world would never be able to embrace Baby Yoda if I had made that. It didn’t really belong in the world I was kind of envisioning.”
He added he was listening to Ennio Morricone “all day, all night, and typing away”. Whilst his darker approach would probably scare executives, it was actually the box office failure of “Solo” that put the real fear in them:
“In a moment of corporate realignment or whatever happened with the Han Solo movie, they just suddenly decided they weren’t making pictures like that, and the opportunities in streaming presented themselves. I’m not sure it ever would have happened. I’m not sure it was in anyone’s plans, what I was thinking.
Mangold will get another go at “Star Wars” with his upcoming “Dawn of the Jedi” film, which will track the origins of The Force and is said to be inspired by Biblical epics such as “The Ten Commandments”. That film doesn’t have a release date.
