Star Wars: Obi-Wan Director Deborah Chow Confirms Series Still in Development

Star Wars: The Mandalorian director Deborah Chow, executive producer and director on the untitled Obi-Wan series starring Ewan McGregor, confirms the live-action series remains in development at Disney+. The six-episode series — set between the events of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope as it follows an exiled Kenobi on the desert planet Tatooine, where he serves as the secret guardian of future Jedi Luke Skywalker — was once feared cancelled following a late January report the project was on-pause “indefinitely.” Chow updated the series while appearing on a pre-recorded Mandalorian panel aired during a live stream of this year’s virtual ATX Festival:

After fellow Mandalorian director Taika Waititi joked he was “all finished” with his recently announced Star Wars feature film, Chow said of Obi-Wan, “We have a little more to do than that, but we’re in development.”

In January, McGregor quickly refuted reports of “creative differences” as “bullsh-t,” saying the series’ shooting start was pushed from August to January 2021.

“It’s not as nearly as dramatic as it sounds online,” McGregor told press while promoting Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, adding Disney and Lucasfilm simply “pushed the shoot to the beginning of next year.”

“The scripts are really good. I saw 90% of the writing and I really liked it,” McGregor added. “All this bullsh-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.”

McGregor added he did not expect the later shooting start to delay the series. The actor’s comments were made before the World Health Organization in March declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic, which brought most of the film and television industry to a standstill.

Earlier in January, online rumors that were swiftly debunked claimed the Kathleen Kennedy-produced series was scrapped. In April, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword screenwriter and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum executive producer Joby Harold was hired as writer on Obi-Wan, taking over from former series scribe Hossein Amini.

“The storyline sits between Episode III and Episode IV,” McGregor, who portrayed the younger Kenobi in George Lucas’ prequel trilogy, previously told Men’s Health. “It will be interesting to take a character we know in a way and show him — Well, his arc will be quite interesting, I think, dealing with that the fact that all the Jedi were slaughtered with the end of Episode III. It’s quite something to get over.”

The complete first season of Star Wars: The Mandalorian is now streaming on Disney+. The streamer has yet to announce a release date for Obi-Wan.