Kenobi, the highly-anticipated Obi-Wan standalone series for Disney+ centered on actor Ewan McGregor’s return to the Star Wars universe, is set to start shooting in March, according to its star. The confirmation comes about a month after McGregor revealed a slightly less specific timeline, letting slip that Kenobi would shoot sometime in spring. Currently planned as a one-season-only event series, Kenobi will take place sometime between the end of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith—when Obi-Wan can be seen bringing baby Luke Skywalker to his aunt and uncle on Tatooine—and the one that started it all, Episode IV A New Hope, when we meet an older Kenobi on the same desert planet, living as a hermit named Ben while watching over Luke from afar.
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Of course, in the 1977 original and through 1983’s Return of the Jedi, the iconic Jedi Master was played by legendary actor Alec Guinness. But when the saga went back in time for 1999’s Episode I The Phantom Menace, McGregor came aboard to play Obi-Wan as a young padawan, becoming a fan favorite by combining Guinness’s gravitas with his own spirit of fun and adventure. Kenobi marks the first time McGregor will play the role since 2005’s Episode III, and he’ll also be the first Star Wars movie star to bring his character to a live-action series. (Another upcoming Disney+ show will topline Diego Luna reprising his Rogue One character Cassian Andor.) So far, no other Kenobi casting has been revealed, despite rumors that Hayden Christensen could return as Anakin Skywalker and the show might be casting kid versions of Luke and Leia.
Amid the speculation, Twitter’s All Things Kenobi surfaced a bit of solid news from British talk show The Graham Norton Show that Kenobi is about to take its first step into a larger world. “We start shooting in March of next year,” McGregor told the host, adding with a laugh, “It’s not all me, but it certainly will be a lot of me—which is good.“
McGregor also talked about catching up to Alec Guinness’s age—which works well for where Kenobi falls on the Star Wars timeline. “The fun thing about doing them in the first place when I was much younger,” he said, “was trying to imagine Alec Guinness. How would he play these scenes as a younger guy? And it led me to watch a lot of his early work, which I hadn’t seen before… and I had such a great time just sort of studying him in those movies.” This time, McGregor continued, “I’m much closer in age to him, and it will be my challenge to sort of meet him somewhere… I love Alec Guinness. I never got to meet him but I love him through his work, and it’s a great honor to sort of try and pretend to be him but younger.”
After Kenobi was delayed over story concerns, confirmation of its imminent start is huge for Star Wars fans. Season one of The Mandalorian showed that not only could Star Wars be done for live-action TV, but it could be done incredibly well. McGregor’s Obi-Wan was a highlight of the polarizing prequel trilogy, so moving him closer to the original trilogy while utilizing Mandalorian‘s next-gen technology could make Kenobi the most anticipated entry in the saga since The Force Awakens. Mostly it’s great because, with all the delays, there was fear the Obi-Wan series might simply never happen. But if we know anything about Kenobi, it’s that striking him down only makes him more powerful than we could possibly imagine.
Source: All Things Kenobi/Twitter
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