Star Wars Finally Released The Movie Disney Wanted 13 Years Ago

Published Sep 17, 2026, 9:30 PM EDT

Since 2019, Kevin Erdmann has been one of Screen Rant's Senior Staff Writers, covering all kinds of Superhero and Star Wars media with Easter egg breakdowns, theory pieces, breaking news, and more. A huge Star Wars & MCU fan, Kevin also loves Batman (because he's Batman), but could talk for hours about why Nightwing is DC's greatest hero. 

With 8 years of total experience covering entertainment and pop culture, Kevin has gotten the chance to interview top creatives and talent, and has also attended major media events like Disney's D23 convention.

Majoring in Cinema Studies with a minor in Comics and Cartoon Studies from the UofO, Kevin lives in Oregon with his wonderful wife, adorable dog, and sinister cat who is no doubt currently plotting his demise.

For over a decade, Disney has owned Lucasfilm and the Star Wars IP. In that time, the franchise has released multiple movies, shows, games, books, and more. However, one of the earliest planned movies has technically just been made, 13 years later.

Since 2012, the Disney/Star Wars era has seen the release of the Skywalker saga's culminating sequel trilogy, as well as standalone films like Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story. While there have also been various animated series, 2019 was the dawn of live-action Star Wars shows, beginning with The Mandalorian starring Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin.

Now, Lucasfilm has leveraged the small-screen franchise's popularity for a big-screen debut with 2026's The Mandalorian & Grogu, a film that effectively takes the place of one of the earliest movies Disney put into development (but never saw the light of day). In many ways, The Mandalorian & Grogu is essentially the Boba Fett solo movie Disney wanted over a decade earlier.

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Disney's Original Star Wars Plans Included A Boba Fett Movie

Originally, Disney planned multiple standalone Star Wars movies shortly after purchasing the franchise in 2012. One of those ideas was a spin-off starring the legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett, with reports claiming that a project was in development as early as 2013. With Disney having done away with the "Expanded Universe" of novels, books, and comics and reclassifying them as non-canon "Legends", it followed that the movie would have provided a new canon story that likely would have kicked off with Boba Fett's survival from the Sarlacc after falling into the Great Pit of Carkoon in Return of the Jedi.

Plans for a Boba Fett movie became more concrete in 2015 when Josh Trank was attached to direct (though he eventually left the project). It was then reported that James Mangold was brought on to develop a spaghetti-western Boba Fett movie that likely would have leaned toward an R-rating, only to be canceled in 2018 following Solo's lackluster box office performance, combined with the pivot to streaming with the dawn of Disney+ in 2019. As such, the planned Boba Fett movie eventually became a Boba Fett series, and the same thing happened with Lucasfilm's original plans for its Obi-Wan Kenobi movie/s.

By 2021, The Book of Boba Fett series was released on Disney+...only to be met with some pretty mixed reviews. Likewise, the biggest criticisms largely come from the reality that the Mandalorian/gunslinger/bounty hunter role Fett almost exclusively held in the established canon had been taken by someone else in the new Disney era.

The Mandalorian & Grogu Finally Gives Star Wars Its Mandalorian Bounty Hunter Movie

Image credit: Francois Duhamel / © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

The similarities between Boba Fett and Din Djarin are fairly obvious, despite their differing journeys in the Star Wars timeline. After all, both are armored Mandalorian warriors who originally made their living as bounty hunters in the galaxy's underworld, and it was very clear as early as The Mandalorian's first episode that Din Djarin was meant to fill a very similar role to Boba Fett, even after Fett himself returned in The Mandalorian season 2 ahead of his own series.

By not having as much canonical baggage as Boba Fett, it seems the greater narrative freedom to be had with an all-new Mandalorian character like Djarin was pretty appealing to Lucasfilm (like giving him a powerful Force-sensitive child to protect and eventually adopt). As such, Djarin has very much become the face of the Mandalorian side of the Star Wars franchise since his debut in 2019. Looking back, it used to be Boba Fett ever since his own debut in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back.

As one of the most popular Star Wars characters in the modern era, Djarin's evolution has now grown even further with the release of The Mandalorian & Grogu, transitioning the duo to the big-screen. Complete with the spaghetti-western influences, it's easy to argue that this latest Star Wars movie and its Mandalorian bounty hunter lead is in many ways the Boba Fett movie Disney wanted way back in 2013. The themes and tones might be different from what was likely envisioned by directors like Josh Trank and James Mangold, but one can likely imagine plenty more similarities/shared DNA than anything else.

Would A Boba Fett Movie Have Worked?

Ultimately, a Boba Fett solo movie as originally envisioned likely would have worked, especially if Lucasfilm had embraced the character's core strengths, darker concepts, and everything that makes him such a beloved character in the first place. After all, Rogue One was praised for its more grounded execution, darker tones, and unique standalone narrative.

Unfortunately, the series we got wasn't quite it. To be fair, there are elements of The Book of Boba Fett that do work well, like showing Boba's survival from the Sarlacc and seeking to claim Jabba the Hutt's throne in the wake of Return of the Jedi as a new Tatooine daimyo. However, Lucasfilm chose to give Boba some controversial new characterization, presumably to differentiate him from the franchise's new Mandalorian he helped inspire, focusing far less on his reputation as one of the galaxy's greatest bounty hunters, where the show left him as this well-intentioned "mayor" of Mos Espa, a far cry from the Boba Fett of the original trilogy and non-canon Legends.

As if Din Djarin taking his original role in the Star Wars franchise wasn't clear already, Djarin and Grogu received entire episodes of Boba Fett's show that Fett himself wasn't even in. His show basically got hijacked by the character who'd largely taken his place and popularity to begin with.

Although Boba Fett has finally received his own live-action project series, the show repeatedly redirected attention toward the character Disney created just a couple of years earlier. In that respect, it's easy to see how the new Mandalorian & Grogu movie serves as the fulfillment of the film Disney tried to make over a decade earlier...ironically with different characters.

Of course, Boba Fett was the foundation that established the "armored helmeted bounty hunter" as one of Star Wars' coolest archetypes. However, Din Djarin has since taken on that archetype to a much greater extent than Fett was ever allowed to do on-screen. It's arguably a big part of why he's such a great character. In short, Disney's Star Wars now has its movie starring a Mandalorian warrior as the lead...it apparently just took an entirely different character to finally make it happen.

The Mandalorian & Grogu is now streaming on Disney+ from Lucasfilm.