Star Wars: Beau Willimon to co-write James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi movie

THR reports that Beau Willimon is set to co-write the script for James Mangold’s Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi.

Willimon is a playwright and screenwriter best known for developing House of Cards for Netflix, but he also has some Star Wars experience as he worked on the first season of Andor, writing three episodes of the critically acclaimed series. He will co-write the script for Dawn of the Jedi (which is just a working title) alongside Mangold, who will also direct.

We don’t know all that much about the project, only that it will take place 25,000 years before the Skywalker Saga and explore the first Jedi and the discovery of the Force. “It was something that Jim [Mangold] immediately sparked to, and I think it’s a really nice compliment to what we’re doing with moving into the future with Rey, and then understanding a bit more of where this all came from,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy explained. “Because it will be at the heart of creating the new Jedi Order, so to get a real sense of where that might have began with the dawn of the Jedi could be pretty cool.“

Mangold has said that this new project will take inspiration from 1950s biblical epics. “I told Kathy [Kennedy, head of Lucasfilm] I wanted to make a kind of Bible movie,” Mangold explained, “a kind of Ten Commandments of Star Wars–kind of a Cecil B DeMille film about the arrival of the Force, and that’s what I’ve been pecking away at between press events. That’s the idea.“

As James Mangold is currently shooting his Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, it’s not known when Dawn of the Jedi will start shooting, but it won’t be the first new Star Wars movie in theaters. That honour will be reserved for The Mandalorian & Grogu, which Jon Favreau will direct. Production is expected to kick off later this year and the film was officially slated for a May 22, 2026 release earlier today.

In addition to Dawn of the Jedi and The Mandalorian movie, we’ve also got Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s post-Rise of Skywalker film about Rey (Daisy Ridley) rebuilding the Jedi Order as well as a New Republic movie being developed by Dave Filoni which will tie together the stories featured in The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and The Book of Boba Fett.