James Mangold on his borderline R-rated Boba Fett movie

James Mangold says his scrapped Boba Fett movie was a borderline R-rated spaghetti western that probably scared the shit out of Lucasfilm.

Star Wars certainly took inspiration from spaghetti westerns, but James Mangold was planning on fully embracing the genre for his Boba Fett movie.

James Mangold was tapped to direct the Boba Fett movie back in 2018 as well as co-write the script with Simon Kinberg. Unfortunately, the project never got off the ground but Mangold teased his vision for the movie while speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “At the point I was doing it I was probably scaring the shit out of everyone,” Mangold said. “But I was probably making much more of a borderline R-rated, single planet spaghetti Western. They probably 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.“

In another world, we might have actually gotten to see James Mangold’s Boba Fett movie, but the box-office failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story led Lucasfilm to scrap the project. “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,” Mangold said. “I was just listening to Ennio Morricone all day, all night, and typing away. I’m not sure it ever would have happened. I’m not sure it was in anyone’s plans, what I was thinking.“

Although James Mangold wasn’t able to get the Boba Fett movie off the ground five years ago, he has returned to Lucasfilm for a second chance at the franchise. It was announced at Star Wars Celebration that Mangold would helm a movie about the origins of the Force. “It takes place 25,000 years before Episode IV, and it’s about the discovery of the Force,” Mangold said. In contrast to the spaghetti western influences on Boba Fett, this new project will take inspiration from 1950s biblical epics. “I told Kathy [Kennedy, head of Lucasfilm] I wanted to make a kind of Bible movie,” Mangold explained, “a kind of Ten Commandments of Star Wars–kind of a Cecil B DeMille film about the arrival of the Force, and that’s what I’ve been pecking away at between press events. That’s the idea.“

James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will hit theaters tomorrow, so be sure to check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray.