A couple of months back, set photos revealed that construction was underway at the same location Lucasfilm had used to shoot exteriors for The Mandalorian, leading to speculation that Obi-Wan Kenobi could be starting production much earlier than expected. However, star Ewan McGregor has always been adamant that he wouldn’t be stepping back into the robes until 2021 at the earliest, so it seemed as though the crew were merely getting ahead of the game to ensure that the Disney Plus exclusive hits the ground running.
Even if it wasn’t for the Coronavirus pandemic slowing the entire industry to a crawl, Obi-Wan was hardly racing through pre-production anyway, after the studio sent everyone home to rework the scripts from scratch due to being dissatisfied with how the story was coming together. Of course, it just wouldn’t be the Disney era of Star Wars without some behind the scenes turmoil, but it looks like the execs are happy with the latest drafts because McGregor has now confirmed when filming will begin.
In a recent interview, the 49 year-old revealed that he’ll be rocking up to the set in March of next year, and the Trainspotting star also admitted that he’ll be pitching his performance much closer to Alec Guinness’ turn in the Original Trilogy given that he’s two decades older than he was the last time he played the legendary Jedi.
“We start shooting it in March next year. The fun thing about doing them in the first place, when I was much younger, was trying to imagine Alec Guinness and how he would play these streams as a younger guy. It led me to watch a lot of his early work, which I hadn’t seen before. Brilliant movies, wonderful films he’d been in and I just had such a great time studying him in those movies. This time, I will be much closer in age to him and it will be my challenge to sort of meet him somewhere. It’s a great honor to try and pretend to be him.”
With a start date now locked in, it shouldn’t be too long before further additions are made to the cast, meaning we’ll finally be able to separate fact from fiction after almost every major Star Wars character from all three trilogies has found themselves linked to a role in Obi-Wan Kenobi at some point.