It was probably an inevitability, given that the good folk at Disney have show themselves to be absolute masterminds when it comes to squeezing every cent of value out of a franchise, but here it is: we’re getting ourselves a standalone Obi-Wan Kenobi movie in the expanding Star Wars cinematic universe.
The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop today, saying that while the film is in extremely early stages, it already has Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stephen Daldry in its orbit. You might remember Daldry as the director behind such films as Billy Elliot, The Reader and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He’d be an interesting choice for an Obi-Wan film.
The project apparently has no script right now, but if Daldry gets the directing gig he’ll oversee the scriptwriting process at Lucasfilm.
Who knows what such a film might cover – it could be an exploration of Obi-Wan’s pre-Episode I backstory, or it could tease out what the bloke was up to between Episode III and Episode IV. I’d say the latter is probably more likely, which means you’d probably be seeing a return of Ewan McGregor to the role. THR says that McGregor is “open to playing the character again.”
He did say that in an Entertainment Weekly interview earlier this year:
But I’ve always said that I’d be happy to do it if they wanted to do it. It would be a good segue between the last episode of the prequels and the new episodes. I think they’ve got films to make until the 2020s, so I don’t think it’s going to happen soon if it happens at all.
Of course, Obi-Wan’s story was exhaustively documented in the previous Expanded Universe novels and associated ephemera, but Disney gave a righteous middle finger to the world’s nerds when they declared that shit no longer canon. Sorry, dweebs!
Details are obviously extremely scant right now, but there’ll no doubt be more on this over the coming months. Or years. C’mooooon.
