James Mangold, who just picked up a Directors Guild of America nomination for “A Complete Unknown,” recently told MovieWeb that his upcoming “Star Wars” movie is deliberately set thousands of years before any other movie in the long-running franchise so that he doesn’t have to deal with the canon and can thus avoid angering fans.

Previous comments on how James Mangold’s Star Wars movie happened have painted a picture of mutual excitement between the co-writer/director and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. So hearing that Dawn of the Jedi is not only still cooking, but it’s being given the time to do so, is exciting.

A new Star Wars movie is on the way from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director James Mangold, and it's going to be set tens of thousands of years back on the Star Wars timeline. Why set it so far in the past? Well, it's because Mangold doesn't want his hands tied by Star Wars's formidable canon.

James Mangold is taking the phrase, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” quite literally. Mangold’s Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi will be a prequel movie set thousands of years before the Skywalker Saga. Mangold, who will direct Dawn of the Jedi, is excited to tell a new story with his co-writer, Beau Willimon.

While not much is known about the plot of James Mangold‘s upcoming Star Wars movie, it has been confirmed that it will take place 25,000 years before the events of A New Hope. In a recent discussion,

The thing James Mangold finds most appealing about his Dawn of the Jedi movie may also allow the film to chart a bold new future for Star Wars.