After another hiatus from movie theaters, Star Wars is poised to take back over cinemas with three upcoming films set in wildly different eras of the universe. The one that could present the most questions to fans, though, is James Mangold's Dawn of the Jedi film, which has found its writer in one of the minds behind Netflix's House of Cards.
It was announced on Friday that playwright and screenwriter Beau Willimon has been tapped by Lucasfilm to help pen the script for Mangold's upcoming Star Wars film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Willimon will be working alongside Mangold, who is set to direct, in outlining the early days of the Jedi Order and their understanding of the Force.
Willimon is an established writer with credits dating back to 2008, when he primarily worked as a playwright for many off-Broadway shows in New York City and theaters across the U.S. His first screen credit came in 2011's The Ideas of March, starring Ryan Gosling and George Clooney, which itself was an adaptation of Willimon's play Farragut North.
His most notable credit came with the premiere of Netflix's House of Cards in 2013, which Willimon helped to develop from the original BBC series of the same name. Willimon served as the showrunner for the series first four seasons before stepping down for House of Cards' last two seasons.
The Dawn of the Jedi film won't be his first outing in the Star Wars universe, either, as he helped pen three episodes of the Disney Plus series Andor, including the critically acclaimed episode ‘One Way Out.'
The root of the Force
Willimon's latest Star Wars outing was originally announced at 2023's Star Wars Celebration alongside the Dave Filoni-produced Mandoverse film and the New Jedi Order film starring Daisy Ridley. Lucasfilm didn't waste time, either, with the announcement of Mangold as the Dawn of the Jedi film's director.
“When I first started talking to Kathy [Kennedy] 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,” Mangold said following the announcement. “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 film will reportedly be set 25,000 years before the events of The Phantom Menace, making it the earliest period in the Star Wars universe put to film. While story details are being kept tightly under wraps, many fans online have speculated it will explore the formation of the Jedi order and its first conflicts with what would become the Sith.
No release date has been announced for Mangold's Dawn of the Jedi film, but he is expected to jump straight into development after completing his upcoming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.
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