James Mangold's Scrapped BOBA FETT Movie Would've Been a Sergio Leone-Inspired Spaghetti Western

Before James Mangold signed on to write and direct a film set in the ancient times of the Star Wars universe, he was attached to direct a Boba Fett movie. This was years ago and after it was reported, both Mangold and Kathleen Kennedy denied the project existed, but we all knew better.

Now Mangold is admitting that he “more than flirted” with making a Boba Fett movie for Lucasfilm and he said that the film would have been “a one-off spaghetti Western in the vein of Sergio Leone.” That concept was then taken and reworked into The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.

While I’ve been enjoying the hell out of The Mandalorian, I can’t help but be curious to see what Mangold would have done with a Boba Fett movie. I’m sure it would have been much better than what we got with The Book of Boba Fett, though.

It was while Mangold was directing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, that Kennedy asked him if he was still interested in playing in the Star Wars sandbox. When talking about that, he said: “I said, ‘Yes, but it seems like everything you’re developing is continuing forward.’” So he then proceeded to pitch “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?”

Kennedy loved the idea so they signed Mangold on to develop it! Kennedy added: “Jim’s pretty fast — he’s already got the basic treatment laid out in his head.” Once the writer’s strike is over, Mangold “has every intention of wanting to move this forward very aggressively, and we want to support that.”

Mangold previously shared some additional information on the kind of Star Wars film that he’s making, and said: "It just came from me thinking about if I were doing one, it seemed to me that most of what they were thinking about doing with movies were either in the present of Star Wars or the future, and what attracted me most was the distant past and how this galaxy formed and how, more specifically, the Force was discovered."

I know we’ve got a long way to go before we see this movie released, but I’m very excited about the story! I love the concept and I love that it will explore the ancient history of Star Wars which has never been explored before.