James Mangold has gotten very busy lately since he finished Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and looks like he will remain in the Disney fold for the next few years before he can even get to Swamp Thing for DC Studios.
On Friday, the Hollywood Reporter broke the news that playwright and screenwriter Beau Willimon is going to co-write Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, that will be directed by Mangold. Dawn of the Jedi will explore the ancient origins of the Force, taking place an 25,000 years before any of the existing movies and shows in the sci-fi franchise.
Dawn of the Jedi was first announced almost a year ago at Star Wars Celebration in London back in April 2023.
While that movie has no release date, Mangold is expected to turn his attention to Dawn of the Jedi after he wraps A Complete Unknown, his Bob Dylan biopic that stars Timothée Chalamet and is being made by Disney arm Searchlight Pictures.
The kicker is that the next Star Wars movie is slated to be The Mandalorian & Grogu, which also on Friday received a new release date of May 22, 2026. That means Mangold won’t be able to get to Swamp Thing for another two to three years at the earliest, unless DC Studios hires a writer in the meantime to write the first draft or two.
Previously, Mangold saw the leadership change at DC Studios under James Gunn as an opportunity to pitch his vision for a dark, gothic horror take on Swamp Thing’s origins.
As soon as I heard DC was having a leadership change with Gunn taking over, I saw it as an opportunity to just put my hat down — I just called him,” Mangold said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I said in all of the stuff you’re doing, if the idea of me making a Gothic Horror Film origin story of Swamp Thing fits in, tell me.”
Mangold added: “I don’t have any agenda for a universe or building towards something, have at it but I’d just be interested in doing a version of Frankenstein “it’s a live!!” done enough. Swamp Thing always occurred to me as a wonderful version at a kind of Frankenstein story much in the way of one of my favorite pop films growing up, Robocop. This guy who just wakes up and finds that he becomes this machine, which is something I was fascinated with Logan but the idea to me of making a raw horror mystery film about a guy who wakes up and becomes this thing and there’s an amnesiac quality of how did I get here? Who did this to me? So I’m envisioning this horror noir film following a creature who can’t be seen trying to piece together what happened from fragmented memory.”
