Exclusive: Ewan McGregor confirms Kenobi was originally one film

Two years ago, director Stephen Daldry was supposedly lined up to direct a standalone Obi-Wan film. Unfortunately, the dismal box office performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story put all the spinoff movies on hold. Today ComingSoon.net got to speak to Ewan McGregor at the Doctor Sleep junket, where he confirmed that before it was going to be a Disney+ series it was indeed going to be only a single film.

“It wasn’t always going to be a series, not initially,” McGregor confirmed. “When we first started talking about, that wasn’t really in the cards but everything’s changed so much, so quickly. It’s really exciting that it is now. I’m really into the idea to be able to tell the story over several hours instead of just one hit. I think it’s going to be quite cool.”

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Consisting of six hour-long episodes, the new series will take place eight years after the events of Revenge of the Sith, where we last saw Obi-Wan delivering the infant Luke Skywalker to his Tatooine homestead. It is expected to begin its production in summer 2020.

The series will be written by Hossein Amini (The Alienist, Drive) and directed by Deborah Chow (The Mandalorian). Chow, Amini, and McGregor will serve as Executive Producers alongside Kathleen Kennedy, Tracey Seaward (The Queen) and John Swartz (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story). Jason McGatlin, Lucasfilm’s Executive Vice President Production, will serve as co-producer.

McGregor took over the role of Obi-Wan for the Star Wars prequel trilogy two decades ago from the late Alec Guinness. His last live-action appearance was in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. However, McGregor also lent his voice to Rey’s Force vision in The Force Awakens.

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No other details about the potential Obi-Wan series are currently available. A few Star Wars novels and comics have explored Obi-Wan’s life on Tatooine between Episodes III and IV. Obi-Wan also had a memorable rematch with Darth Maul in Star Wars Rebels. But any story direction for the new show is simply conjecture at this point.