Kenobi: Ewan McGregor has known about plans for the Star Wars series for years

Ewan McGregor, you lying scum! We trusted you! YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE! For years, when the actor was asked about rumours about a potential Star Wars spinoff focusing on him reprising his fan-favourite Prequel Trilogy role as a young Obi-Wan Kenobi, McGregor has denied that anything was happening and joined fans in begging Disney to make something happen. And it was all a sham!

While only officially revealed in August that Lucasfilm was indeed developing a Kenobi series for Disney+, McGregor revealed to Men’s Journal that he’s been keeping in this news for far longer than that.

It’s a fucking massive relief. Because for four years, I’ve been having to lie to people about it.

FOUR YEARS? That means that Lucasfilm has been working on this since 2015 which was right about when the rumours began. Of course, back then Disney+ wasn’t even a pipe dream, and the rumours were that we were going to get a standalone Kenobi movie. Speaking to ComingSoon.net, McGregor confirmed that this was actually the original plan before things changed.

It wasn’t always going to be a series, not initially. When we first started talking about, that wasn’t really in the cards but everything’s changed so much, so quickly. It’s really exciting that it is now. I’m really into the idea to be able to tell the story over several hours instead of just one hit. I think it’s going to be quite cool.

In typical Star Wars fashion, the lid is being kept firmly shut on the upcoming Disney+ production. The only thing we know for sure is that Hossein Amini (Drive, The Alienist) as on writing duties and prolific TV director Deborah Chow – who is about to step into the world of Star Wars with work on The Mandalorian – will helm the entirety of the Kenobi series. A series that McGregor has now revealed will be six hour-long episodes. And despite declaring that “I’m not allowed to tell you anything about it,” he’s also confirmed, as most fans suspected, that the show will be set after the between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope when Obi-Wan went into hiding on Tattooine with an infant Luke Skywalker.

The storyline sits between Episode III and Episode IV [when] the Jedi Order was falling apart. It will be interesting to take a character we know in a way and show him—Well, his arc will be quite interesting, I think, dealing with that the fact that all the Jedi were slaughtered with the end of Episode III. It’s quite something to get over.

For us, it’s been 15 years since we saw that moment on-screen, but Kenobi those wounds will still be fresh. And for McGregor, it means he’s now older and closer in age to when Alec Guinness first played the wizened Jedi Master in A New Hope in 1977.

I want to get closer and closer to how Obi-Wan felt while Alec Guinness was playing him. I feel like I’m grayer and nearer him in age, so it’ll be easier to do that.

With no release date set as of yet, that is now really the sum total of what we know about Kenobi. Hopefully, nobody will be keeping secrets about it for another four years!

Last Updated: October 28, 2019