The upcoming “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series for Disney+ has pushed back production until 2021 but Ewan McGregor refutes claims that the show is being put on hold…
There might be trouble in a galaxy far, far away.
Reports surfaced on Thursday that the upcoming “Star Wars” spinoff series centered on Obi-Wan Kenobi had been put on hold indefinitely while the powers that be at Lucasfilm and Disney retool the story and the scripts before production could begin.
Apparently, the studio was unhappy with the initial scripts as well as the overall story, which reportedly featured a similar plot to “The Mandalorian” where Obi-Wan Kenobi would be tasked with protecting a young Luke and Leia after they were separated and sent to different corners of the galaxy to keep them away from their father, Darth Vader.
The problems eventually resulted in Lucasfilm opting to search for a new writer to handle the script duties with the total episode order being reduced from six to four in the limited series offering.
Later that same night, Ewan McGregor, who is set to reprise his role as the Jedi master, refuted those reports and said that there was a delay in the start time for production but the issues over the creative differences were being blown out of proportion.
“We just pushed the shoot to the beginning of next year. The scripts are really good. I saw 90 percent of the writing and I really liked it,” Mcgregor said when speaking to the press while promoting his upcoming film “Birds of Prey.”
“All this bullshit about creative differences and all that stuff is, none of it true. We just pushed the dates, they want — last episode, episode 9 [Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker] came out, everyone had more time to read the stuff that had been written, and they felt that they wanted to do more work on it. So they slid the shoot. It’s not nearly as dramatic as it sounds online.”
According to McGregor, shooting on the new “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series has been shifted from summer 2020 to the start of 2021. There’s still no exact timeline when the show would land on Disney+.
This is the latest drama to happen in the “Star Wars” universe after directorial problems plagued two previous spinoff films — “Rogue One” and “Solo” — not to mention thee change in directors for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” The studio did manage to create a critical hit with “The Mandalorian,” which was created and written by Jon Favreau. That show has already been renewed for season 2 with a debut date in Fall 2020.
As for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, it appears McGregor won’t get to pick up a lightsaber again until at least sometime in 2021 and perhaps the show will make it’s debut later that year or sometime in 2022 on Disney+.
