Boba Fett to get his own 'Star Wars Story'
The galaxy’s baddest bounty hunter is finally ready to get his time to shine. With Solo blasting into theaters this weekend, there’s news that his sometime nemesis (and fan favorite) Boba Fett is going to get a Star Wars Story of his very own.
The Hollywood Reporter says that James Mangold, the Oscar-nominated writer-director of last year’s Wolverine swan song, Logan, is in the midst of developing a standalone feature about the Mandalorian mercenary, who first appeared onscreen in animated form in the Star Wars Holiday Special before helping to capture Han Solo for Jabba the Hutt in The Empire Strikes Back. Despite having only a few minutes of mostly dialogue-free screen time and apparently meeting his demise in the dreaded Sarlacc Pit in The Return of the Jedi, Fett has enjoyed a popular afterlife in the prequel trilogy, animated series, books, comics, video games, and toys.
Boba Fett was a much chattier character in ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’:
Plot details are under wraps but would, like Solo, be set between the events of Revenge of the Sith and the original Star Wars, A New Hope, just like the other Star Wars Story in development, a film centering on Obi-Wan Kenobi and helmed by Stephen Daldry.
This represents Lucasfilm’s second attempt to launch a Fett-based film. Previously, Lucasfilm pulled the plug on a project reportedly focusing on Boba Fett’s early bounty-hunting escapades that was to be helmed by Josh Trank and would have followed Rogue One into theaters. But after the filmmaker’s disastrous Fantastic Four reboot, he and Lucasfilm announced that they were parting ways. (Both Fantastic Four and Logan were produced by Simon Kinberg, who has also worked on the Star Wars animated shows and was at one point rumored to be heading up the Fett movie.)
While the news will no doubt be cheered by genre fans, given Mangold’s track record with Logan, the Star Wars director’s chair remains the domain of white men. Although Lucasfilm is run by a woman, Kathleen Kennedy, and has gone to extremes to diversify the galaxy far, far away onscreen, every single Star Wars installment produced or in development is being helmed by white men — from Ron Howard’s Solo to the upcoming film trilogies being helmed by The Last Jedi‘s Rian Johnson and Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to the live-action TV series in the works from Jon Favreau. No wonder there was so much cheering when J.J. Abrams, who is helming 2019’s Episode IX, hired a black woman, Victoria Mahoney, as second-unit director for that project, which promises to end the “Skywalker Saga.”
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