Obi-Wan Kenobi Was Planned As A Movie Trilogy: Reveals Original Writer
Obi-Wan Kenobi recently ended with its six-episode run. It saw Ewan McGregor reprise his role as the titular Jedi master. The series was a huge success for Disney+, with the largest premiere of any series on the streaming platform.
Obi-Wan Kenobi was originally planned as a feature film. Stephen Daldry was set to direct Obi-Wan Kenobi as a film in 2017 with screenwriter Hossein Amini penning the script. It was just one of many planned spinoffs based on popular Star Wars characters.
It also included James Mangold’s planned Boba Fett film and the then-unreleased Solo: A Star Wars Story. However, following the underwhelming box office returns for Solo, Lucasfilm reworked both Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi into streaming series.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to be a trilogy”: Stuart Beattie
In an exclusive interview with TheDirect, writer Stuart Beattie reveals that Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to be a trilogy of movies. He says he wrote a complete script for the Obi-Wan Kenobi feature film and pitched Obi-Wan Kenobi in 2016. Because the series was based on his script, he received a writing credit for Episodes 1, 2, and 6 of the show even though he had no direct involvement in the show.
He says that he presented Lucasfilm with three storylines intended to be a trilogy, outlining how Obi-Wan would develop into his persona in ‘A New Hope’ and explaining how and why he was willing to kill himself on the Death Star. Beattie said:
“When I pitched my Obi-Wan story to Lucasfilm, I said, ‘There’s actually three stories here. Because there’s three different evolutions that the character has to make in order to go from Obi-Wan to Ben,. And the first one was the first movie, which was the show, which was, ‘Surrender to the will of the Force. Transport your will, surrender your will. Leave the kid alone.’
So then, the second [movie] was thinking about where Kenobi ends up. And one of the most powerful and probably the most powerful moment in all of Obi-Wan’s story is that moment where he sacrifices himself in A New Hope. Great moment, you know, makes you cry.
But, if you stop and think about it, it’s a pretty sudden thing, to just kind of go be fighting a guy, to see Luke and go, ‘I’m gonna die.’ You know, that to me, that required forethought. That required pre-acceptance that this was going to happen.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi might return for Season 2
The creators of the series have all agreed that the first season was intended to be a conclusion rather than the beginning of a long-term endeavor. However, the season finale undoubtedly left room for future explorations. Beattie admitted as much,
“So for me, if I have anything to do with the second season of Obi-Wan, that’s the character evolution that I would take him on. That, to me, is really interesting. And like I said, universal.”
The news of a trilogy of Obi-Wan Kenobi spinoff films is an intriguing look at how Lucasfilm intended to develop the Star Wars brand beyond the Skywalker saga. Given how popular Obi-Wan Kenobi has been on Disney+, there is a good chance the intended limited series will return for a second season.
