On Jimmy Kimmel Live last night, Ewan McGregor talks about his Obi-Wan “practice beard,” reading William Shatner’s book Get A Life on a prequel set with Ahmed Best, the big Disney+ reveal, and his new movie, Doctor Sleep.
Ewan McGregor, FREE AT LAST to talk about returning as Obi-Wan, has dropped a few things about the upcoming Disney+ series over at Men’s Journal, where he’s their latest cover star.
The show, which features the return of Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, takes place eight years after Revenge of the Sith – 11 before A New Hope.
Deborah Chow
“We really wanted to select a director who is able to explore both the quiet determination and rich mystique of Obi-Wan in a way that folds seamlessly into the Star Wars saga,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement. “Based on her phenomenal work developing our characters in The Mandalorian, I’m absolutely confident Deborah is the right director to tell this story.”
The show will be on Disney+, the streaming service that launches later this year. It’ll be the third live-action Star Wars series, and the second staring a major returning movie character, after The Mandalorian and a Cassian Andor-centric Rogue One prequel.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series with Ewan McGregor is an official go for Disney+, and we finally have a proper trailer for The Mandalorian!
The Obi-Wan series is “close,” with the scripts written, and it will begin filming next year, as will the Cassian series. Obi-Wan is set eight years after Revenge of the Sith.
And we also got a date for The Clone Wars: February 2020.
There’s also a trailer for Disney+ as a whole, which leans heavily on the old heartstrings:
One of the most persistent Star Wars rumors since Disney bought Lucasfilm has been the return of live-action Obi-Wan. Today, Cinelinx sources report that Ewan McGregor has signed on to reprise the role in what looks to be a Disney+ series.
Given the fandom’s evergreen thirst for Obi-Wan, and Disney+’s willingness to get film stars to reprise their roles for streaming – see Rogue One’s Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk, or many Marvel stars – this is quite plausible.
UPDATE #2: Giving this rumor a lot more weight, trades Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline are also reporting it, via their own sources. Reports from the Hollywood trades rank only a smidge below official confirmation, and as we’ve seen many times before, several of them having it independently is a very, very good sign.
D23 is just over a week away, and while we know for sure The Mandalorian will be the star, but the timing here is pretty interesting. The Disney+ panel at D23 Expo is Friday, August 23 at 3:30 p.m. Pacific.
The blurb for Claudia Gray’s Master & Apprentice is here, giving us just that much more information about the upcoming Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi novel. Check it out under the cut.
“I honestly didn’t think we would ever have the opportunity to return to The Clone Wars,” says Filoni in a statement. “Thanks to the relentless fan support and the team behind Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming service, we will now get to tell more of those stories. We feel a tremendous responsibility to make something that lives up to the legacy that George Lucas created with the original series and I think our team, many of whom worked on the show from the beginning, has risen to the challenge.”
It’s time for our perennial Obi-wan movie rumor to resurface! This time it comes via the fan site Fantha Tracks, who has a source that claims to have seen documents at Pinewood. A director (perhaps Stephen Daldry, the subject of the last rumor), writing team and even the art department are “in full pre-production mode,” with the movie expected to begin filming after Episode IX is done.
Pictured, above: My approximate feelings on a Jabba the Hutt movie. Between this and Boba Fett, it’s like the rumors are endeavoring to make movies on saga major leaguers like Han and Obi-wan more palatable. But man, if this is what they’re really knocking around for future spin-offs, no wonder Rogue One got to be first at bat.
