Why do people like Boba Fett so much? He was a lousy bounty hunter. He hid between the trash to capture Han Solo in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980). And in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) he has one of the most pathetic deaths in all the saga. His spaceship was neither something spectacular. And yet, this scumbag clone has managed to get his own little space in all the fans of the space saga created by George Lucas far far away in time.
After opening the path of having independent standalone movies, “Star Wars Stories”, where we dig into the origins of the characters that form the Star Wars universe started this year with Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), recently it has been announced that Boba Fett, the clumsy bounty hunter, will have his own movie. So far the movie doesn’t have a final official name, being called merely Untitled Star Wars/Boba Fett Project. We also don’t know yet when it is expected to hit cinemas, probably sometime between 2021 and 2022. But we do know that James Mangold will direct it and has written the script with Simon Kinberg, who was the producer of his most recent hit movie Logan (2017).
The real pre-production of this Boba Fett film won’t be able to start until the next year 2019 since director James Mangold is currently doing the post-production of his latest work Ford v. Ferrari, starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale. But for sure Mangold has been a good choice of a director, with a big bunch of titles under his arms. Dramas like Girl, Interrupted (1999) or Walk the Line (2005), thrillers like Cop Land (1997), Identity (2003) and 3:10 to Yuma (2007), and franchise blockbusters like The Wolverine (2013) or the mentioned before Logan (2017) prove that he is a versatile filmmaker capable of doing a good mix of entertaining pop-corn flicks but remaining being good pieces of cinema.
When filmmaker Josh Trank was attached to direct the Boba Fett standalone film the plot was announced to run around the events happened during the first Star Wars trilogy, Star Wars (1977) Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983). But friction with the producers forced Trank to leave the project. So now we will have to wait and see what direction James Mangold’s movie is taking and when in the Star Wars chronology the action is set.
