AS Obi-Wan Kenobi wraps up on Disney+, writer Stuart Beattie said the series was initially planned as a movie trilogy, in an interview with The Direct.
Apparently, the script went through significant growing pains on its way to becoming a Disney+ TV series, where writer Joby Harold stretched Beattie’s proposed two-hour movie into a six-hour miniseries.
“I wrote the film that they based the show on,” Beattie said, explaining that he spent a year-and-a-half working on it. When the decision was made not to produce any more Star Wars spin-off films after the box-office failure of Solo, he left the project and went on to other things.
“I just got credit for the episodes because it was all my stuff.”
When Beattie pitched his Obi-Wan story to Lucasfilm, he explained that there are three evolutions for the character to go from Obi-Wan to Ben: “The first one was the first movie (now made into the show) – Surrender to the will of the Force. Transport your will, surrender your will. Leave the kid alone.
“Then the second was thinking about where Kenobi ends up. One of the most powerful moment in all of Obi-Wan’s story is that moment where he sacrifices himself in A New Hope ... But, if you think about it, it’s a pretty sudden thing, to see Luke and go, ‘I’m gonna die.’ That to me required forethought.”
The writer also revealed that both Lucasfilm and Ewan McGregor were on board with the idea: “We were ready to go. Ewan is just so fantastic at it and he’s the perfect age and everything.”
But Beattie was met with disappointment when he didn’t get the greenlight for the movie: “Unfortunately, Solo changed the direction of the system. I like Solo, personally, but it hadn’t made a lot of money, and it certainly crushed us.”
Director Deborah Chow also recently confirmed that Obi-Wan was planned as a limited series, although Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy hasn’t ruled out a second season. “I think if there’s huge engagement and people really want more Obi-Wan, we’ll certainly give that consideration because the fans, they speak to us.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi is now streaming on Disney+.
