D23: Disney+ Confirms Ewan McGregor’s Return In Star Wars ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Series
It’s official… The force is still with Ewan McGregor, as he returns to his ‘Star Wars’ role in a new ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi‘ series for Disney+.
Last week, rumours surfaced of McGregor returning to the role he last played the part back in 2005’s ‘Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith’. At D23 last night, Lucusfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy made it official, bringing McGregor out on stage at the end of the Disney+ panel. She also revealed the news that they have “have all the scripts written, and we’re ready to go next year,” so it is going to land a lot sooner than people possibly expected!
At the end of the prequel movies, Obi-Wan moved to Tatooine to watch over a young Luke Skywalker who is being raised by his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Whilst there are no details on what the show might entail, if you think it would just be Kenobi kicking back on a sand dune and scaring off the occasional Tusken Raider, before morphing into Alec Guinness, you’d be wrong.
Obi-Wan does spend most of his time keeping watch over the young Skywalker from a distance, but there have been a few other notable events since his exile to the desert planet. The Marvel comic book series recounts a number of stories from the “The Journals of Ben Kenobi”, which he wrote for Luke, detail various adventures he undertook whilst staying in the Dune Sea. They included encounters with Garro, a mysterious man who taught Yoda in the ways of the stonepower, dealings bounty hunters and, inevitably on Tatooine, encounters with Jabba The Hutt and his criminal empire. There was also his final showdown with Maul, which was covered in ‘Star Wars Rebels’.
Getting McGregor to return as Kenobi has been something on the wishlist of Star Wars fans for a while. There were originally rumours of a possible movie, but following the (arguably, unjust) critical reception to the ‘Solo’ movie, it seems Disney has moved on to the idea of a series instead. A similar thing happened to the rumoured ‘Boba Fett’ film, which morphed into Jon Favreau’s series ‘The Mandalorian’ starring Pedro Pascal.
They didn’t announce a premiere date for ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi‘, with it shooting in 2020, it is likely to be late 2020 at the very earliest before we see it. Disney+ launches November 12 in US, Canada, Netherlands, and Australia… Frustratingly, there is still no launch date for Disney+ in the UK. We do know the services is due to release in most major markets within the first two years, but let us hope we don’t have to wait that long for it! We will let you know when we hear more.
