Ewan McGregor confirms reports that Disney’s planned Star Wars TV show Obi-Wan Kenobi is delayed. After Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released in 2015 and ascended to become the biggest-grossing domestic film in history, reports quickly began coming out about other planned Star Wars projects including standalone films focusing on various individual characters from the universe.
Ultimately, a pair of standalone Star Wars movies were indeed made: Rogue One and Solo. Other rumored projects at various times included a Boba Fett movie, a Yoda movie and an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie, all ideas that had fans excited. However, after Solo failed to achieve blockbuster status at the box office, Disney reportedly curtailed a lot of their Star Wars movie plans. Eventually though, the studio did reveal some Star Wars projects for their streaming service Disney+, including the now-released The Mandalorian, which plays like an evolution of the Boba Fett idea, plus plans for Obi-Wan and Rogue One character Cassian Andor.
The Obi-Wan show has in fact gotten far enough along in production for scripts to be written and McGregor to be cast in the lead, but recently it was reported that the show was delayed, casting its future in doubt. Speaking to IGN, McGregor himself confirmed reports of a delay in production on the show but assured fans that it will still arrive on its planned release date (which has in fact not yet been revealed). McGregor said:
"It’s just slid to next year, that’s all. The scripts were really good. I think now that Episode IX came out and everyone at Lucasfilm's got more time to spend on the writing, they felt like they wanted more time to spend on the writing. I’ve read about eighty, ninety percent of what they’ve written so far, and it’s really, really good. Instead of shooting this August, they just want to start shooting in January, that's all. Nothing more dramatic than that. It often happens in projects, they just wanted to push it to next year. It will have the same release date, I don’t think it will affect the release date. They're still shooting towards having the film [show] release when it was going to be originally."
Despite McGregor’s assurances that the scripts for Obi-Wan were “really good,” it was reported that Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy was not impressed by them, hence the need to go back and rewrite. The same report stated that the scripts were torpedoed because the story was too close to The Mandalorian, with Obi-Wan protecting young Luke and Leia (how that would have worked within Star Wars canon is anyone's guess). Reports also said the planned first season of the show had been cut from six episodes down to four (by comparison, season 1 of The Mandalorian got eight episodes).
No doubt McGregor is doing some of the good soldier routine in telling an interviewer that everything is fine with Obi-Wan Kenobi when there's good reason to believe that everything at the present time is not fine. However, just because the scripts are being rewritten, that doesn’t mean the show will necessarily fail to be delivered on time. As McGregor said, with no movies coming up, Lucasfilm is able to focus more on the Disney+ side of things and that extra attention will no doubt help the process of developing Obi-Wan.
Of course, there are some who will argue that Kennedy and company being more involved might not be a great thing after what they did with the sequel trilogy. The Mandalorian was of course made without input from the folks responsible for the movies and many would argue that was a plus. It will be interesting to see if Obi-Wan Kenobi does ultimately arrive in a reasonably timely fashion, and if it gets a thumbs up from fans.
Source: IGN