Rumor Has it an Obi Wan Kenobi-Centric Star Wars Movie is About to Start Shooting

As long as the notion of Star Wars spinoff movies has existed, fans have wondered if there would be an Obi-Wan Kenobi film in the mix, something that covers his time between Episodes III and IV. As Ewan McGregor is now fifteen years younger than Sir Alec Guinness was when he first played Obi-Wan—McGregor's 47, Guinness was 62 when he first played Obi-Wan—the timing seemed perfect.

Hell, they could squeeze an entire trilogy of flicks out of this, ending the last one just before his first encounter with Luke. Then, once they make the Luke origin film, we'll never have to wonder what happened to every single character immediately before the events of Episode IV ever again. It'll be great.

But for whatever reason, this Obi-Wan movie seems to have stalled. It was never officially announced, and Ewan McGregor said in several public forums that he would be game for returning, but there was no traction. In fact, nothing has been announced for the future of Star Wars movies beyond Episode IX and two far off trilogies—one by Rian Johnson, the other by Game of Thrones' showrunners.

According to Fantha Tracks, however, there is indeed an Obi-Wan movie getting ramped up to shoot once Episode IX wraps, and it's pretty common knowledge around Pinewood Studios, where all of the Star Wars films have shot their studio scenes. Fantha Tracks' "well-placed source" has confirmed that the following information has been shared around the studio for quite some time...

The project is sufficiently along that an art department is now in full pre-production mode at Pinewood Studios, England with ancillary work being carried out at Industrial Light & Magic in London.  A number of concept artists, prop modellers, and storyboard artists are working as a team across the two locations on the film, with the group growing in numbers every month.

Contracts have also been extended to a number of crew who have worked on various Star Wars films produced at Pinewood under the Disney era, to join the production when their work on Episode IX ends.  This will see the Obi-Wan crew grow gradually over the remainder of the year but primarily from October on wards.

Pre-production will continue at Pinewood whilst Episode IX shoots from this summer through the end of the year, at which point production of the Obi-Wan movie has been scheduled to move onto stages in mid January 2019 with the main shoot to begin in April of 2019.

The project is being developed under the corporate name of PLT Productions (UK) Ltd.

The scheduled release date is December 2020.

Now, this could be the rumored Stephen Daldry-directed film with McGregor on board, and McGregor's just been playing dumb all this time. OR, perhaps they've recast the role and McGregor truly isn't involved. Now, that second possibility is awfully stupid and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, which is why I think it's at least plausible.

I suppose they're just waiting for the thing to get into production and ensuring that they won't have to fire the director before they officially announce the film. This way they can save themselves any sort of potential embarrassment related to their inability to retain directors. Anyways, we'll keep you posted on this one as more info comes in.