James Mangold's STAR WARS Movie Brings on ANDOR Writer as Co-Writer

One of the Star Wars projects that’s set up at Lucasfilm that I’m most excited and curious about is the one being developed by director James Mangold, which is being referred to as Dawn of the Jedi.

The story will take place 25,000 years before the events of the original trilogy, and it will focus on the birth of The Force. This is some freakin’ awesome Star Wars lore to explore.

THR has offered an update on the project and revealed that House of Cards creator Beau Willimon has come on board to co-write the script with Mangold. Willimon is no stranger to Star Wars as he also wrote three episodes of Andor Season 1, which earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.

Mangold previously talked about his project and how the film came to be, and explained why it's set in the distant past:

"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."

Mangold then went on to talk about the pitch he made to Lucasfilm saying:

"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. 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."

Mangold also described the movie as a Ben-Hur or The 10 Commandments film about The Force:

“It’s a chance to tell the entire story of its own, the birth of the force. When I first talked to Kathy Kennedy about it, I just said, ‘I just see this opening to make kind of a Ben-Hur or The 10 Commandments about the birth of the Force.’ The Force has become a kind of religious legend that spans through all these movies. But where did it come from? How is it found? Who found it? Who was the first Jedi? And that’s what I’m writing right now.”

In another interview, when talking about how the movie would center on the discovery of The Force, Mangold 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."

What we do know about the early history of The Force was that in “36,453 BBY, philosophers and scientists from several Star systems gathered on Tython to share mystical knowledge. The Force was ‘discovered.’ Unfortunately, in 25,793 BBY, several Tythan scholars began using their knowledge of the Force to pursue power, leading to the beginning of the Force Wars. Peace-minded monks that survived the destruction on Tython established the Jedi Order in 25,783 BBY.”

I’m fascinated by this Star Wars lore and I’m excited to see what Mangold ends up doing with it as he tells the story.