Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi Limited Series ‘Next Top Priority’ for Disney+: Report

Disney and Lucasfilm are reportedly planning a six-episode Star Wars limited series centred on Obi-Wan Kenobi, as the “next top priority” for its streaming service Disney+, slated to launch later in 2019 in the US. It would be the third Star Wars project for Disney+, after Pedro Pascal-starrer The Mandalorian from Jon Favreau that's currently in production, and the in-the-works Rogue One prequel series that will follow Diego Luna's Cassian Andor. Ewan McGregor, who donned the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels, has repeatedly expressed his interest in reprising the role.

Star Wars fan site Star Wars News Net is behind the new report, claiming that though “there are many [Star Wars] ‘TV series' rumours out there right now, we are told this one is happening and will go into production”. It notes that the project was initially planned as an anthology film, on the lines of Rogue One and Solo — English director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) was said to be in “early talks”, back in August 2017 — but the poor box office performance of Solo led to the project being shelved, as part of Disney's rethink of its Star Wars strategy.

If the Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series does happen, it will actually have more in common with other projects at Disney+, from the house of Marvel, which is developing multiple limited series revolving around Tom Hiddleston's Loki, Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch and Paul Bettany's Vision, and Anthony Mackie's the Falcon and Sebastian Stan's Winter Soldier, who adopted the moniker White Wolf with Avengers: Infinity War. The Mandalorian is expected to be an ongoing series, while Disney-Lucasfilm haven't provided any details on the Rogue One prequel series.

On the film side of things, writer-director J.J. Abrams announced over the past weekend that Star Wars: Episode IX — scheduled to release in December 2019 — has finished filming. The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson is working on his own Star Wars trilogy, while Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have their own series of Star Wars films, which might be a trilogy as well.