Now that the Star Wars spinoff Obi-Wan Kenobi show is officially wrapped, some people behind the project are letting more details out about plans for the future and plans that never came to be. After the show did officially wrap, there were more than a few people who felt the Disney Plus series should have been a movie instead, and it appears that was originally the plan.
The limited Star Wars series is set not long after the empire has executed Order 66 and taken over the galaxy. Obi-Wan is on the run and hiding on Tatooine at the beginning of the show but is soon drawn back into the action when a very young Princess Leia finds herself in trouble. While the show was largely viewed as struggling out of the gate, most fans felt like the story and action were good enough by the end of the six-episode run that they wished it was a movie instead. It turns out that Disney actually had plans to make the show a feature film when the concept was first being discussed.
Writer Stuart Beattie recently opened up to The Direct about exactly what the plans for Obi-Wan Kenobi originally entailed, saying not only was the series originally going to be a movie, but it was going to be a cinema trilogy. Beattie added that the box office struggles of Solo: A Star Wars Story was a big reason why Disney decided to go with the streaming series instead. "I wrote the film that they based the show on. So, yeah. I spent like a year, year-and-a-half working on it. And then, when the decision was made not to make any more spin-off films after Solo came out, I left the project and went on to other things," Beattie said. "Joby came on and took my scripts and turned it from two hours into six. So, I did not work with them at all, I just got credit for the episodes because it was all my stuff."
The idea to make Obi-Wan Kenobi a movie went so far as to bring Stephen Daldry and Hossein Amini to write and direct the flick. However, the project was shifted over into an episodic series set for Disney Plus in 2019, right about the time that the streaming platform first launched. After the change, Harold was brought in as the head writer and Deborah Chow was hired to direct.
If there were originally plans for a movie trilogy, that could bode well for fans who were hoping that the Obi-Wan Kenobi would get a second season. While the people behind the series have said season 1 is currently the only season planned, they have also hinted at the possibility that those plans could change.
At the same time, the success of Obi-Wan Kenobi could lead Disney to lean back toward its original plans. Marvel Studios has had success building movies off their Disney Plus series and vice versa. It's not a stretch to think an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie could pick up where the series left off.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is now available on Disney Plus.
Source: The Direct