"25000 years before": When James Mangold opened up about his upcoming Star Wars movie and how it will fit in the franchise's timeline

James Mangold's upcoming Star Wars film release date is 'a complete unknown', even though he took up the stage with Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy at Lucasfilm's Studio Showcase at Star Wars Celebration Europe in 2023. By that time, over three years had passed since the last Star Wars feature film, The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

All we know is that it's based on the Dawn of the Jedi comic book series that ran from February 2012 to March 2014. A year ago, the Academy Award-nominated director appeared in an interview with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. When talking about Star Wars, he spoke of his still untitled movie that,

"When I talked to some of the Star Wars clerics who keep track of these timelines, I was like, "so when would this have happened?" And they were like, "25,000 years before Episode One." And I was like, "oh, I was looking for some distance, but that's distance.""

For those who don't know, it is about the Je'daii Order (yeah, it wasn't always Jedi), and explores the origins of the Force.

James Mangold's Star Wars will be a biblical epic

The way it's put, it looks like this Star Wars beginning will be akin to Endgame, which, you know, was something of a biblical proportion itself (we hope you read that in the Willem Dafoe-way from Spider-Man). James Mangold said of his upcoming film:

"When I first started talking to Kathy about doing one of these pictures, what occurred to me was thinking about what kind of genre of movie within Star Wars I wanted to do. And I thought about a Biblical epic, like a Ten Commandments, about the dawning of the Force. Where did the Force come from, when did we discover it, when did we learn how to use it?"

The Force is, in the George Lucas universe, well, the moving force behind the entire saga. It's also called the Way (no, not the Bene Gessirit one) that was important to both the Jedi and the Sith monastic order.

Going by the comic book, we will see a lot of new characters in the franchise, presumably Shae Koda, Sek'nos Rath, Tasha Ryo, Xesh, and more.

A similar idea to explore the Jedi Knights has been there since the 70s

In 1977, when the fourth film in the Star Wars saga was released, Gary Kurtz, who produced Episode IV and Episode V, revealed during the Sci-Fi Expo that the original concept of the saga focused on the origins of Jedi Knights. Not just that, if they had chosen to walk that path, Obi-Wan Kenobi would've been introduced in its 'Episode II.'

As they say, everything happens for the best, and there's no way to assess if the original concept, as Kurtz revealed, was used in this epic space opera, we would have the same billions of dollars worth of franchise.

Now, thanks to Dawn of the Jedi, fans have an idea about what James Mangold is creating, although it may not be a comic-accurate one. There's always an emotional center in his stories, as he has mentioned before, and this saga sure has plenty of it to give him just the right amount to connect with the audience.

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Also Read: James Mangold drops details about the Star Wars prequel Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi

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