Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ series rumored to have been put on hold

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Lucasfilm hasn't had the best of luck with its STAR WARS productions, with many of the films, such as ROGUE ONE and SOLO, undergoing rewriting and reshooting, and unfortunately, we may have to count the Obi-Wan Kenobi series in development for Disney+ among them.

Set eight years after the events of STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SITH, the six-episode Disney+ series will find Ewan McGregor returning as Obi-Wan Kenobi with Deborah Chow (The Mandalorian) directing and Hossein Amini (The Alienist) penning the script. Production was slated to kick off later this year, but according to Collider, the series may have been put on hold. Contrary to last week's cancellation rumours, Collider says that the series hasn't been cancelled, merely delayed. The crew at Pinewood Studios in London were sent home and told that the series would be down "indefinitely." The issue apparently comes down to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy's unhappiness with the scripts, which will now be reworked with the hope that they'll be ready to go by the summer. Here's hoping, I'd hate to see this series scrapped after so much buildup. Update: THR added that only two scripts had been written and that Lucasfilm is now looking for a new writer to script the series, which is apparently being reconfigured from six-episodes to four-episodes.

Screenwriter Hossein Amini (The Alienist) dropped a few tidbits about the series last year.

I can’t say very much. The plan is to start shooting in July, Ewan McGregor is signed on. I think he’s already said that it spans the period between episodes 3 and 4, so sort of after the fall of the republic and the massacre of the Jedi before the events of ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’. It’s fascinating in the sense that it’s a period where there is a lot of change in the galaxy and a lot of hardship. So, for Obi Wan’s character, he has a lot to adjust to given the loss of his close friends and the order that he believed in. It felt like a really exciting opportunity to explore a different side of a franchise that I always loved and I’ve always loved it because of its spiritual aspects as well as its fun and action elements, it seems to work on way more than one level which isn’t always true for those big franchises.

With the possible re-write of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, it's hard to say what shape the final product will take; surely they wouldn't get rid of the Jar Jar Binks appearance?! The Mandalorian wrapped up its first season several weeks ago (with a second on the way), but in addition to the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, there's also Cassian Andor series in development which is set to star ROGUE ONE's Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk.