It’s not quite over, but Obi-Wan has lost the high ground: Disney+ has delayed its Obi-Wan Kenobi series starring Ewan McGregor As Collider first reported, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy is unhappy with the scripts.
The series picks up eight years after the events of 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, and is led by screenwriter Hossein Amini (Drive) and director Deborah Chow (The Mandalorian). Production was supposed to ramp up this month, but today the crew that had assembled at London’s Pinewood Studios were sent home. They were not given a timeline, but instead told that the show would be dark “indefinitely.”
While “indefinitely” might turn out to mean forever, that is not Lucasfilm’s intention. Reports suggest that the scripts will be reworked and production could resume as early as this summer. But rewrites could also take longer, and audiences probably won’t be able to say “Hello there,” to the finished series until at least 2021.
Of course, that “indefinitely” could really mean indefinitely. In 2018 Disney axed a bunch of Star Wars spinoffs, and since then the company has been much more aggressive about pulling the plug on problem projects. Complicating Disney’s plans is the fact that Rise of Skywalker underwhelmed, which puts extra pressure on forthcoming projects.
There isn’t much coming down the Lucasfilm pipeline, especially not compared to their sister studio Marvel. Taika Waititi is in talks to direct a movie, and Marvel-head Kevin Feige has a project confirmed. The one bright spot in that galaxy far, far away has been the breakout success of The Mandalorian, which was recently greenlit for season two.