Last week, rumors blew up that the upcoming Disney+ series, “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” was canceled. Disney and everyone involved denied this and people moved on. Well, yesterday another report hit that Disney and Lucasfilm aren’t canceling the series, per se. Instead, the studio is just throwing out the scripts and delaying the shoot “indefinitely” (effectively putting all the people working on the production out of a job). But definitely not canceling the show.
READ MORE: ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Series Put On Hold At Lucasfilm As Scripts Need Reworking
Normally when these sorts of delays and big changes happen, the actors involved aren’t out there doing a huge press tour. Well, in the case of Ewan McGregor, even though “Obi-Wan” has been delayed “indefinitely,” the actor has to still go out and promote the upcoming superhero film “Birds of Prey.” And at a recent “Birds of Prey” press event (via The Wrap), he talked about the lightsaber-wielding elephant in the room.
“We just pushed the shoot to the beginning of next year,” said the actor. “The scripts are really good. I saw 90% of the writing and I really liked it.”
He continued, “All this bullshit about creative differences and all that stuff is, none of it true. We just pushed the dates, they want — last episode, ‘Episode 9’ 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. So they slid the shoot. It’s not nearly as dramatic as it sounds online.”
McGregor kept downplaying the severity of the “indefinite delay” that has been reported yesterday by saying that the show should begin production in January. And if that’s the case, they actually might keep the same release date.
“I think they want to keep the same release date so it’s not really gonna affect the viewer in any way,” McGregor explained. “It just simply gives them more time to write, make the scripts even better.”
There’s a lot to process in these comments. All the reports yesterday seem to point to the fact that the scripts have been completely thrown out and a new writer is being sought to start from scratch. But according to McGregor, everything is fine and the scripts were great. Also, in the reports, it’s being said that the production doesn’t have a new start date, but McGregor says that it’s happening in January. Obviously, a year is plenty of time to write new scripts, so that’s not too crazy to assume. But the weirdest thing is that he says the studio will hit the same release date. No matter how you slice it, it seems unlikely that delaying production for half a year (originally was set for this summer, according to reports) will not have an effect on the release date. But sure, okay.
No matter how you look at it, the whole situation seems half-baked. On one end, you have reports saying that the series isn’t canceled but it’s not looking promising. Then you have the actor involved saying that everything is hunky-dory and this is all part of the process. But it appears the facts are unchanged — lots of people don’t have work right now, scripts have been trashed, and Lucasfilm is starting from scratch on “Obi-Wan.”