Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+: the event series was almost a movie!

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi, this is the title of the new Star Wars series, which will begin broadcasting on Friday May 27. A project to which Ewan McGregor has been attached for a long time and which was originally to be a feature film.

Indeed, it was first to take over the role of the famous Jedi in a film that the actor was contacted by Lucasfilm. A proposal that he immediately accepted, he who, during the 2010s, never stopped declaring in the media that he was ready to return to the universe created by George Lucas.

A motivated actor

In an interview with Entertainment WeeklyEwan McGregor recalls: “I started to sound like I was looking for work at Disney, because I was like, ‘If Lucasfilm wants to do it, I’d be very happy to do it. And it was popping up everywhere: ‘McGregor happy to do Obi-Wan!’”

But these speeches in the press were not in vain since the interpreter of the master of Anakin Skywalker ended up having an interview with the producers of the saga on this subject. “They just said, ‘Look, we read that you said you’d be happy to do it. We just want to know if you really mean it or if you’re being polite, because we think that might be an option. But we want to know if you’re in or not’. I replied, ‘That’s absolutely true!’”, he recalls.

A size lapel

At the time, Lucasfilm was developing a series of independent spin-offs from the main saga, so Stephen Daldry was hired to develop an Obi-Wan movie. Unfortunately, the fairy tale came to an end in 2018 with the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

After many production setbacks, the feature film on Han Solo’s youth finally hit cinema screens where it only collected $393 million at the global box office, far from $1.33 billion. revenue from The Last Jedi, released the previous year, and even from the first spin-off, Rogue One, which had garnered 1 billion greenbacks.

A bitter failure that put an end to Lucasfilm’s aggressive policy of spin-offs, all of which were put on hold for an indefinite period. However, interest in a project around Obi-Wan Kenobi remained strong for Kathleen Kennedy and the solution came from Disney CEO at the time, Bob Iger.

The quick fix

“When Bob Iger said very specifically, ‘We’re going to start shifting our focus to making shows for Disney+, and we’re launching the streaming service’, that’s really what changed our strategy.”, recalls the producer. And to continue:

We started looking at opportunities in the world of streaming where we could do long-form storytelling, and we realized there was an opportunity to experiment in that space without the level of surveillance that happens when you go out a feature film.

Hence the birth of the series The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch, The Book of Boba Fett and therefore Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose broadcast is imminent and which will also mark the return of Hayden Christensen to the screen in the skin of Darth Vader. .

The two actors were recently reunited for the preview of the series:

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