Star Wars first Jedi movie by James Mangold is on hold and sounds unlikely to happen

Outgoing Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy said it was "on hold" and that the new team favors a new trilogy by Simon Kinberg

Outgoing Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has given a status report on the Star Wars movies in development in an interview with Deadline. The bad news: James Mangold's historical Star Wars story about the origins of the Jedi is "on hold," despite having an "incredible" script.

Mangold's film, tentatively titled Dawn of the Jedi, was to be set no less than 25,000 years before the original movie trilogy and deal with the emergence of the Force and the first Jedi. "Jim Mangold and Beau Willimon wrote an incredible script, but it is definitely breaking the mold and it’s on hold," Kennedy said. She characterized it as no more likely to make it to the screen than Steven Soderbergh and Adam Driver's Ben Solo movie that Disney nixed, despite a finished and "just great" script by Scott Burns. Both those films are "really on the back burner," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said there are also finished scripts for Donald Glover's Lando Calrissian movie and the Taika Waititi film, which was announced all the way back in 2020. She said these two movies are "still somewhat alive;" perhaps more likely to make it to the screen than the Mangold and Soderbergh films, but only just. "That's going to really be up to the new team to figure out," Kennedy said, meaning her successors as head of Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan. "Taika has turned in a script that I think is hilarious and great," she said. "It's just not my decision, especially when I've got a foot out the door."

Kennedy indicated that the most likely prospect to follow this year's The Mandalorian and Grogu and 2027's Star Wars: Starfighter is a trilogy of films by the prolific writer and producer Simon Kinberg. Nothing is known about this trilogy beyond the fact it features "brand new characters and a new story." Kennedy said that "Dave and Lynwen are very much on board with what Simon’s doing." Kinberg has apparently turned in a "very detailed" story treatment and is currently working on a script.

Reading between the lines, the suggestion is that Kinberg is telling a more conventional Star Wars story, while the Mangold, Soderbergh, Glover, and Waititi films are unconventional enough to make Disney uncomfortable. Those four films are "taking a bit of a chance because none of those filmmakers are just walking in trying to do same old, same old," she said. "I’m excited by that, but the studio’s nervous about that, and that’s kind of where it sits at the moment."

Kennedy was also asked about The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson's trilogy, which has never officially been scrapped. Without nixing it entirely, Kennedy said Johnson had been busy with the Knives Out movies and also "got spooked by the online negativity" surrounding The Last Jedi. So that one still sounds extremely unlikely.

Kennedy left the door open to a sequel to Shawn Levy's The Last Starfighter. She said it was "designed as a real stand-alone," but "you cannot ignore the fact that this young actor [14-year-old Flynn Gray, who stars opposite Ryan Gosling] is so good. I will be very surprised if he doesn’t go on and we don’t try to see if there might be future stories." Although stepping down as Lucasfilm president, Kennedy will continue to work as a film producer — potentially on some future Star Wars projects.

Kennedy did not mention the Skywalker saga sequel about Rey directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy — surely not a good sign for that project. Nor was mention made of Filoni's film set between the New Republic and rise of the First Order, which is supposed to tie up the storylines of The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and other related projects.

According to Kennedy, Filoni has only just finished writing and directing season 2 of Ahsoka. Also, as the new co-president of Lucasfilm, he probably has enough on his plate for now — not least figuring out if he can get any of the above movies made.