James Mangold Would Not Have Included Baby Yoda In His Boba Fett Movie That Was ‘Scaring The Sh*t Out Of Everyone’

Back before The Mandalorian became a smash hit for Disney+ (until its troubled Season 3), writer/director James Mangold was reportedly developing a standalone Boba Fett movie. At the time, Lucasfilm was looking to deliver a slate of standalone Star Wars films, which had so far proven successful with Rogue One. However, when Solo bombed those plans were scrapped along with Mangold’s Boba Fett movie, which he’s never fully talked about. Until now.

During a new interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Mangold finally opened up about his Boba Fett movie that never came to be, and why it would not have been the best place for Baby Yoda (or, fine, Grogu) who became the immediate star of The Mandalorian.

Via Entertainment Weekly:

“At the point I was doing it, I was probably scaring the s— out of everyone, but I was probably making much more of a borderline rated R, single-planet, spaghetti western,” he said. “The world would never be able to embrace Baby Yoda if I had made that, because he didn’t really belong in the world I was kind of envisioning.”

While the reins to Boba Fett and the rest of the Mandalorians were handed over to Jon Favreau, Mangold still got to play in the Lucasfilm sandbox. Not only did he get to be the only non-Steven Spielberg director to tackle an Indiana Jones movie, Mangold is currently set to dive back into Star Wars with the new film Dawn of the Jedi, which will reportedly explore the origins of the Force in a time period set 25,000 years before The Phantom Menace.