Yesterday it was reported that Lucasfilm’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series was shut down and put on hold to because Kathleen Kennedy didn’t like how the scripts were turning out. So, it was said that they would go back to the drawing board and rework the scripts.
Well, Ewan McGregor was asked about these reports and in a couple of different interviews, he makes it very clear that he’s not worried about anything and that it’s not a big of a deal as everyone is making it out to be. As I expected, the media has seemed to overexaggerate the situation. The actor told Variety:
“I think we start shooting early next year as opposed to summer this year. I think the scripts are great. They’re in really good shape. They want them to be better. I think we keep our same airdate. All good. I didn’t realize until we got here tonight and everybody is going, ‘Oh, my god!’ But it’s not really as dramatic as it might seem.”
McGregor went on to talk about it a bit more in an interview with CB, saying:
“It just slipped to next year, that’s all. The scripts are really good. I think that so now that Episode IX came out and everyone at Lucasfilm’s got more time to look to spend on the writing, they felt like they wanted more time to write the episodes. I read about 80-90 percent of what they’ve written so far and it’s really, really good. And instead of shooting this August, they just want to start shooting in January, that’s all. It’s nothing more dramatic than that. It often happens in projects, they just wanted to push it to next year.”
The actor went on to say that the change in filming shouldn’t affect the eventual release date, which, as you know, was not previously announced by Lucasfilm or Disney+:
“It will have the same release date, I don’t think it will affect the release date. They’re still shooting towards having the [series] released when it was going to originally release.”
When asked about reports that the series has been shortened from six to four episodes, McGregor denied them saying, “I haven’t heard that.”
So, there you have it! McGregor knows exactly what’s going on behind the scenes, and the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. The guy loves the scripts that have been written and the studio is just looking to strengthen and build on what they currently have.