'Star Wars': Coronavirus won't stop Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan live-action series from making it to the screens
'Star Wars' fans have been hoping for a live-action series on Obi-Wan Kenobi for a long time and now, despite rumors of cancellation and the Covid-19 pandemic, it looks like the series is well on its way. First announced during D23 2019, the new Disney Plus series will be set during 'Episode III' and 'Episode IV' of the 'Star Wars' films and will feature Ewan McGregor as the legendary Jedi master.
In January, reports surfaced that the series had been canceled due to creative differences but during a live stream of this year's virtual ATX Festival, series director Deborah Chow confirmed that it's still on. Right after fellow panel member and 'The Mandalorian' colleague Taika Waititi joked that he was "all finished" with his recently announced 'Star Wars' feature film, Chow said, "We have a little more to do than that, but we're in development."
Back when the first reports of cancellation had emerged online, the show's star Ewan McGregor had refuted the claims saying the series' shooting was simply postponed from August to January 2021. "It's not as nearly as dramatic as it sounds online," McGregor told reporters while promoting 'Birds of Prey'. "The scripts are really good. I saw 90% of the writing and I really liked it," McGregor added.
"All this bulls**t about creative differences and all that stuff, none of it is true. We just pushed the dates ... last episode, [Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker] came out, everyone had more time to read the stuff that had been written, and they felt that they wanted to do more work on it." So the Obi-Wan series, which is still untitled by the way, is definitely still happening. And 'Star Wars' fans have even more reason to rejoice because Jon Favreau has confirmed that 'The Mandalorian' Season 2 is still on track for its October release as well.
"We were lucky enough to have finished photography before the lockdown, so thanks to how technology-forward Lucasfilm and ILM are, we've been able to do all the editing visual effects remotely... It will be available as planned on Disney+ in October," Favreau shared during the same panel, which also featured fellow directors Dave Filoni, Deborah Chow, Taika Waititi, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Rick Famuyiwa, and was conducted by Anthony Breznican. "It will be building on hopefully what people loved from the first season. It doesn't feel like the next season, it feels like work continuing."
He added, "I hope people are having as much seeing it as we are having making it." Are you excited about the Obi-Wan series? Or is 'The Mandalorian' Season 2 more your cup of tea? Let us know in the comments below.