Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Series Finds Director
The Disney+ ‘Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi series has found a director it has been announced.
Back in August, it was announced Ewan McGregor would return to the role of Obi-Wan in a new series for the streaming service set eight years after the events of ‘Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith’. Now they have revealed the person guiding the project will be Deborah Chow, who is fresh off a stint on the other Disney+ live-action Star Wars series, ‘The Mandalorian’.
“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,” commented Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy. “Based on her phenomenal work developing our characters in The Mandalorian, I’m absolutely confident Deborah is the right director to tell this story.”
Along with ‘The Mandalorian’, Chow has been behind the camera for a number of episodes on huge dramas recently including ‘American Gods’, ‘The Man in the High Castle’, ‘Better Call Saul’, ‘Lost in Space’ and ‘Jessica Jones’. Previously, she has also worked on ‘Fear the Walking Dead’, ‘Reign’, ‘The Vampire Diaries’ and ‘Mr. Robot’.
Whilst there are no exact details on what the show’s plot might entail, 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. However, 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’.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series has been written by Hossein Amini (‘The Alienist’, ‘Drive’). Chow, Amini, and McGregor 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.
There is no premiere date for ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi‘ yet, but the series will shoot in 2020, so it is likely to be late 2020 at the very earliest before we see it. Disney+ launches November 12 in the 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.
