His film is no good to Disney dead.
The Hollywood Reporter revealed yesterday that James Mangold will write and direct an upcoming Star Wars spinoff film based on popular bounty hunter character Boba Fett. Presumably, the film will be part of the A Star Wars Story series that began in 2016 with Rogue One and continues this week with Solo: A Star Wars Story.
According to the article, it was rumored that Simon Kinberg, the writer-producer behind the X-Men film franchise and films such as The Martian, was working on a Boba Fett movie. Lucasfilm and Disney have yet to make any official confirmation, but THR's sources say that Mangold will co-write the script with Kinberg, who will also produce the project.
Mangold, 54, is best known as the director of the Wolverine films The Wolverine and Logan, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. In addition, Mangold has directed such other films as 3:10 to Yuma (2007), Walk the Line, Knight and Day, Kate & Leopold, Girl Interrupted, and Cop Land.
Boba Fett has been in the works off and on since February 2013, when it was revealed that Disney was planning a spinoff film. In May 2015, director Josh Trank exited the project, after reports of Trank's "erratic behavior" during the production of Fantastic Four, which was produced by Kinberg.
Boba Fett first appeared in the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special in an animated segment as a mysterious figure who betrays Luke Skywalker (after saving him, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2 from a giant monster), only to be revealed as a bounty hunter working for Darth Vader. The character first appeared in live action in the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back, where Fett (Jermey Bulloch) tracked the Millennium Falcon to Cloud City, where Vader captured its passengers and tortures Han Solo. Wanting to collect a bounty on Solo, Fett confronts Vader about whether Solo will survive the carbon freeze process Vader intends to use on Skywalker. Vader promises that the Empire will compensate Fett if Solo dies, and after Solo is determined to be alive following the process, Vader turns him over to Fett.
Fett met his apparent end in 1983's Return of the Jedi, at Jabba the Hutt's palace where Solo's rescuers are captured, and traveled on Jabba's sail barge to a sarlacc pit, where the prisoners were to be executed. After the prisoners mounted an escape, Fett attempted to intervene, and ended up in a brief battle with Luke Skywalker, but Solo accidentally ignited Fett's rocket pack, sending the bounty hunter falling into the Sarlacc's mouth.
In 2002, Boba Fett received hints of an origin in the prequel film Attack of the Clones, where a young Boba Fett (Daniel Logan) is revealed to be a child clone of Jango Fett, who raised Boba as his son. Boba helped Jango escape from Obi-Wan Kenobi, but later witnessed Jango's decapitation at the hands of Jedi Master Mace Windu.