James Mangold Career Summary
Research in progress, March 7, 2025
Occup. Inheritance: No
Nationality: US
Social Class: Upper-middle
Race/Ethnicity: half Jewish (mother)
Family: Parents artists
Formal Education: Columbia MFA
Training: Milos Firman, mentor
First Film: Heavy (1995); age 32
Breakthrough:
First Oscar Nomination:
Gap between First Film and First Nom:
Other Oscars:
Other Oscar Nominations: Adap. Script, Logan
Oscar Awards:
Nominations Span:
Genre (specialties): variety
Collaborators: wife producer (divorced 2014)
Last Film: NA
Contract: NA
Career Length:
Career Output:
Marriage:
Politics:
Death:
James Mangold (Dec 16, 1963) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter, known for his versatility of genres, Mangold made his debut as a film director with Heavy (1995), and gained recognition for the films Cop Land (1997), Girl, Interrupted (1999), Identity (2003), Walk the Line (2005), 3:10 to Yuma (2007), and two films in the X-Men franchise with The Wolverine (2013) and Logan (2017), the latter of which earned him a nomination for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.
He then directed the sports drama film Ford v Ferrari (2019), which earned him a nomination for Best Picture, and directed and co-wrote Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), the fifth and final installment in the Indiana Jones series.
For the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (2024), Mangold was once again nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, in addition to his first nomination for Best Director.
Mangold was born in New York City in 1963, and is the son of artists Robert Mangold and Sylvia Plimack Mangold.He was raised in Washingtonville, New York in the Hudson Valley and graduated from Washingtonville High School. His mother is Jewish, and he describes himself as “half-Jewish.”
He attended the California Institute of the Arts film/video program, where he studied under Alexander Mackendrick. During Mangold’s third year, Mackendrick suggested he should study at CalArts School of Theater as actor, alongside his regular film studies. While at CalArts, he directed the promotional documentary Future View for Disney and General Motors.
In 1985, Mangold secured a writer-director deal at the Disney Company. He wrote a television movie and co-wrote the animated feature Oliver & Company.
A few years later, Mangold moved to New York and applied to Columbia University’s film school,[8] where he graduated with an MFA in film.
While there, he studied under director Miloš Forman who helped him develop the scripts for Heavy and Cop Land. He has worked as feature writer and director since 1995, when his first feature, the indie Heavy, won the best directing prize at the Sundance Film Fest.
Mangold subsequently wrote and directed Cop Land (1997), starring Sylvester Stallone, De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Ray Liotta; Girl, Interrupted,[8] which won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1999 for Angelina Jolie; Kate & Leopold, starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman, for which Jackman was nominated for a Golden Globe as best actor in a musical or comedy in 2001, and the 2003 thriller Identity, with John Cusack.
In 2005, Mangold co-wrote (with Gill Dennis), produced (under his production banner, Tree Line Film[16]), and directed Walk the Line, a film about the young life of singer-songwriter Johnny Cash and his relationship with June Carter Cash. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, it was released on November 18, 2005, to positive reviews and grossed $187 million. It was nominated for 5 Oscars and Witherspoon won Best Actress for her performance as June Carter Cash. Mangold also appeared as actor in The Sweetest Thing as a doctor and love interest to Christina Applegate, as well as in his own Kate & Leopold playing a movie director.
In 2007, Mangold directed the Western 3:10 to Yuma, starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale; it received positive reviews and grossed around $71 million worldwide.
In June 2011, Mangold was hired, initially just to direct the X-Men movie The Wolverine. Along with screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie, Scott Frank and Mark Bomback, Mangold also adapted the screenplay based upon Frank Miller and Chris Claremont’s Japanese Wolverine saga and entered production in Japan and Australia in July 2012. It was a box office success, with worldwide gross of $414,828,246 on a budget of $120 million.
Mangold signed on to write the story and direct the sequel, Logan (2017). The film marked Mangold and Jackman’s third collaboration. Scott Frank was hired to return as co-screenwriter, working as a team with Mangold and Michael Green.[18] The development of the film was lengthy, with Jackman citing his and Mangold’s desire to do the character justice. The film incorporated elements from Mark Millar’s Old Man Logan run on the comics. The plot primarily focuses on character development, rather than superhero spectacle. Logan was a commercial success, and received praise for its gritty approach on the titular character and emotional depth. The movie also earned Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, becoming the first live-action superhero movie to be nominated in that category, as well as Mangold’s first Oscar nomination.
In February 2018, it was announced that Mangold was set to direct a film about the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Christian Bale and Matt Damon starring as Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby respectively, and Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller writing the script. The film, titled Ford v Ferrari, was released in November 2019 to critical acclaim and became a box office success, grossing $225 million worldwide. The film received 4 nominations including Best Picture, with two wins for Best Film Editing and Best Sound Editing.
In February 2020, it was announced that Mangold was in talks to direct the then untitled fifth film in the Indiana Jones franchise, later revealed to be titled Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, taking over for Steven Spielberg, who directed the first four films in the franchise and instead served as one of the executive producers.[28] In May 2020, it was officially confirmed that Mangold would serve as director.[29] Filming began in the United Kingdom in June 2021, and wrapped in February 2022.[30][31] The film was released on June 30, 2023.
In early 2020 Mangold was announced to direct the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown with Searchlight Pictures distributing, starring Timothée Chalamet. Despite production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Mangold committing to Indiana Jones, Chalamet told Variety in November 2022 that he was still preparing for the role and that “the winds that are blowing are blowing in a very positive direction”. In April 2023, Mangold confirmed that the film would likely begin production in August of that year,[34] before plans were suspended in July due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Filming eventually began in March 2024 and wrapped in time for a December release.
In February 2023, Mangold was reported by The Hollywood Reporter to be in early talks to write and direct a film based on the Swamp Thing, as part of James Gunn’s and Peter Safran’s newly announced “Chapter One: Gods and Monsters” film slate for the DC Universe (DCU), after the releases of his Indiana Jones film and Bob Dylan biopic. Two months later in April, Mangold confirmed that he had been hired to write and direct a Swamp Thing film, with Gunn soon confirming that he approached Mangold to do the film upon charting the DCU’s storylines, describing the film as a passion project of Mangold’s.
In April 2023, during Star Wars Celebration Europe IV, Lucasfilm announced Mangold’s involvement as director of a future Star Wars film whose story “will go back to the dawn of the Jedi” and explore the origins of The Force, set around 25,000 years before the events of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.[40][41]
In all of his works, he tries to find an emotional center within his stories he can operate from, especially when he does franchise films due to contemporary culture having made franchises a commodity to the point of being repetitive, commenting “it makes an audience wish that they just had the first one over again. So you have to push something to someplace new, while also remembering the core reasons why everyone was gathered” to make the best story with those issues at its heart, being the approach he employed for Logan and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
With biographical film, he can interpret the known quantities, but the process is more difficult with a big and existing franchise or IP like the Swamp Thing, as he knows the “religious level” the property’s fans may reach like the DC Comics ones in regards to how he adapts such franchise’s lore, thus resulting on him focusing on what he wishes to do for his DC Universe (DCU) film even if his decisions bother fans due to not letting himself be “handcuffed” by a franchise’s lore due to being impossible to please everybody. He dislikes multiverses and multi-movie universe-building despite his work on the X-Men film series–the “enemy and death” of storytelling due to audiences caring more for “the way the Legos connect” over how the story works, which should in emotional level instead of “intellectually” through Easter eggs.
Working in different film genres allows him the ability to decide what works in each film. Part of the joy is that he learns a lot when changing genres or the vernacular in some of the way he communicates in his art, whether he makes action film, Western, superhero film or Marvel Comics film. It allows him to carry over the lessons he learned in one genre to another one that people may not expect, like he did in Logan, a superhero film with themes, visual motifs and references to the Western.
Filmography
1995 Heavy
1997 Cop Land
1999 Girl, Interrupted
2001 Kate & Leopold
2003 Identity Yes Uncredited No Script revisions
2005 Walk the Line
2007 3:10 to Yuma
2010 Knight and Day (Uncredited Script revisions)
2013 The Wolverine
2017 Logan
2019 Ford v Ferrari
2023 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
2024 A Complete Unknown
