Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Ewan McGregor in talks with Disney for Kenobi Disney+ series

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Ewan McGregor in talks with Disney for Kenobi Disney+ series

    https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/obi...us-1203304387/

    Ewan McGregor to Return as Obi Wan Kenobi in Disney Plus Series

    Ewan McGregor is in talks to return as Jedi master Obi Wan Kenobi in a series for Disney Plus, Variety has confirmed.

    No other details on the potential series were available. McGregor previously played the character in the three Star Wars prequels The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. There had been talk for years that McGregor would return in an Obi Wan standalone film, but those plans were reportedly put on hold following the unsuccessful roll out of Star Wars standalone film Solo.

    Reps for McGregor and Disney Plus did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment.

    The Obi Wan series would be the third live-action Star Wars show on Disney Plus. The nascent streamer has previously announced The Mandalorian from Jon Favreau starring Pedro Pascal as well as a series based on Cassian Andor, the character first introduced in the film Rogue One with Diego Luna reprising his role from the film.

    The show would be McGregor’s second major TV role in recent years. He won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy for his role in the third season of the FX series Fargo, playing twin brothers Emmit and Ray Stussy. McGregor is primarily known for his film work. He will star in the upcoming The Shining follow up Doctor Sleep, which is due out in November. He will also play the DC villain Black Mask in the film Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). His other notable film roles include Trainspotting, Moulin Rouge, and Black Hawk Down.

    He is repped by UTA.
    "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

    #2
    You beat me to it.

    Comment


      #3
      What's with all the Steve King Adaptions going on lately?
      sigpic
      ALL THANKS TO THE WONDERFUL CREATOR OF THIS SIG GO TO R.I.G.
      A lie is just a truth that hasn't gone through conversion therapy yet
      The truth isn't the truth

      Comment


        #4
        CONFIRMED at D23!!

        They brought Ewan out on stage and announced the scripts are done, they will film next year!
        "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

        Comment


          #5
          "Hello there!"

          Well done, Disney. Finally a really good news. I am so excited about it.

          I wish we could have a Ventress/Ahsoka centric or KOTOR show as well.
          "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

          "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

          "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

          Comment


            #6
            Director Deborah Chow announced as showrunner this afternoon.

            Chow has directed episodes of Mr Robot, Vampire Diaries, TURN, Iron Fist, Reign, Fear the Walking Dead, Jessica Jones, Lost in Space, Better Call Saul, The Man in the High Castle, American Gods, and two episodes of the upcoming Star Wars series The Mandalorian.

            She will be joined by writer Hossein Amini, writer of Drive, Snow White and the Huntsman, 47 Ronin, and three episodes of The Alienist.

            The series will be set eight years after Revenge of the Sith.
            "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

            Comment


              #7
              ComingSoon says they did an interview with McGregor...but it sounds like just a brief chat. Still, a couple of interesting things they pulled out of him:

              - this series started life as a standalone movie, but after the box office failure of Solo and the shelving of the A Star Wars Story movies, this was reworked into a TV show

              - Ewan McGregor is completely on board with it being a TV show instead of a movie: "It wasn’t always going to be a series, not initially. When we first started talking about, that wasn’t really in the cards but everything’s changed so much, so quickly. It’s really exciting that it is now. I’m really into the idea to be able to tell the story over several hours instead of just one hit. I think it’s going to be quite cool."

              - it will be six hour-long episodes

              - confirmation it's going to be set eight years after Revenge of the Sith (11 years before A New Hope)
              "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

              Comment


                #8
                And will it come to "a TV set near you" in Australia? (As the promotion moguls like to spruk "Coming to a cinema near you" for movies)?

                do not subscribe to Foxtel or Netflix or Stan, or any other pay TV.
                http://i.imgur.com/gDxdl9E.gif








                ​ ​

                Comment


                  #9
                  As the thread title says, it’ll be on Disney+. Not sure what the international rollout plans are for Plus, but they intend to make the service available internationally as a competitor to Netflix. (And isn’t all TV “pay TV”?)
                  "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

                  Comment


                    #10
                    local networks (commercial ones) are all free out here Digi
                    Disney+ is set to come out next year here IIRC.
                    sigpic
                    ALL THANKS TO THE WONDERFUL CREATOR OF THIS SIG GO TO R.I.G.
                    A lie is just a truth that hasn't gone through conversion therapy yet
                    The truth isn't the truth

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Ah, okay. I don’t think there’s any over-the-air TV here, hence my comment. I stand corrected! Yes we get local channels for “free,” but they’re “freely” provided by the cable company once you’re signed up with them and paying a bill.
                      "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post
                        Ah, okay. I don’t think there’s any over-the-air TV here, hence my comment. I stand corrected! Yes we get local channels for “free,” but they’re “freely” provided by the cable company once you’re signed up with them and paying a bill.
                        Stick up an antenna, get reception, you get the channel. TV operates more like radio here, at least on local channels (get a good enough antenna, and that's the whole country)
                        For us, "cable" means things like Foxtel where there is a paid subscription to get many, many more channels. We also don't have a "TV tax" like there is in the UK.
                        sigpic
                        ALL THANKS TO THE WONDERFUL CREATOR OF THIS SIG GO TO R.I.G.
                        A lie is just a truth that hasn't gone through conversion therapy yet
                        The truth isn't the truth

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Got it! So, my revised response to you, Who Knows, would be: it's possible, but doubtful. The show is being made for Disney+ and their original series/movies are almost certainly going to be exclusive in order to drive subscription numbers.

                          According to this article, the Australia rollout of the Disney+ service is happening on November 19th (which is just one week after it launches in North America).
                          "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

                          Comment


                            #14
                            The series's writer, Hossein Amini, recently did an interview with Discussing Film recently, in which the Kenobi series came up:

                            Michael Slavin: Yeah, that’s fantastic thank you. So, one of your upcoming projects is the anticipated Obi Wan show for Disney+ and I was wondering what you can say about the current production status of that series, I know you can’t say everything-

                            Hossein Amini: I can’t say very much. The plan is to start shooting in July, Ewan McGregor is signed on. I think he’s already said that it spans the period between Episodes III and IV, so sort of after the fall of the Republic and the massacre of the Jedi before the events of Star Wars: A New Hope. It’s fascinating in the sense that it’s a period where there is a lot of change in the galaxy and a lot of hardship. So, for Obi Wan’s character, he has a lot to adjust to given the loss of his close friends and the order that he believed in. It felt like a really exciting opportunity to explore a different side of a franchise that I always loved and I’ve always loved it because of its spiritual aspects as well as its fun and action elements, it seems to work on way more than one level which isn’t always true for those big franchises.

                            Michael Slavin: That actually links very well onto my next question because I want to sort of ask how is it where you’re tackling such an iconic Star Wars character, but you’re tackling it in perhaps the worst span of their life because everything they ever stood for has fallen and everyone they have ever known has been massacred before this new hope is given, so I was wondering how you’re approaching that aspect of the character.

                            Hossein Amini: For a writer that is a difficult journey to explore because there is so much conflict in terms of internal and external and that’s what you’re always looking for in a story. When things are going great it’s difficult to wrangle a story out of that because there is nothing to struggle against in both the interior and exterior sense. So, I’ve always been drawn to situations that revolve around some kind of crisis.

                            Michael Slavin: Previously Obi-Wan was actually reportedly planned as a movie so why do you think that this story works best as a six-episode limited series?

                            Hossein Amini: I think because of what we were speaking about before, the situation is so complex both for him personally and in a way, the state of the galaxy, you sort of need time to explore it and to be honest there are loads of other stories within that period as well, it’s quite a few years. There is so much going on between Episode III and IV that hasn’t been explored. The idea of being able to go into a character journey plus the politics and plus all the vastness of the Empire and what’s going on is exciting just because it feels like a proper period of history and sometimes that is hard to do in two hours. Sometimes with two-hour movies there is always an imperative for the action and the plot to move particularly fast and quickly and to go from action sequence to action sequence and there are many more aspects to storytelling that I find interesting.

                            Michael Slavin: So, how did you actually come about joining the project? Did you have to pitch, were you contacted? I was just wondering how you ended up working on the series?

                            Hossein Amini: I was initially contacted by the original director for the film version, Stephen Daldry and chatted with him and loved him as a director and then with Lucasfilm, it was more of a conversation than a pitch, I am incredibly gracious about it. They didn’t make it feel like an audition.

                            Michael Slavin: Have you always wanted to- you mentioned you were really fascinated by the period and are clearly a big Star Wars fan. Is Obi-Wan a character you’ve always been curious to explore?

                            Hossein Amini: Well he was one of my favorite characters, probably because he spans throughout both the trilogy and the prequels and it’s just something about how different he is from one to the next that is really fascinating and makes him such an iconic character. It’s also that I loved Star Wars because I’ve always been interested in different religions, like the whole notion of the samurai I’ve always loved, there are so many aspects of Star Wars that particularly appealed to me when I was a kid and it’s been actually really exciting being able to look at all the animated series and read many of the books it’s a whole world and galaxy that I’ve loved diving into.

                            Michael Slavin: I was wondering how long you’ve actually been attached to the series because I know Ewan McGregor mentioned that he’s been having to lie to people for years about it. Have you been similarly having to keep things tight-lipped? How long have you been attached to the project?

                            Hossein Amini: It’s probably coming up to almost two years now.

                            Michael Slavin: Oh wow, so that is quite a long period that this has been worked on.

                            Hossein Amini: Yeah I mean obviously, it’s been on and off but yeah.

                            Michael Slavin: So, I was just wondering how has it been working with the Lucasfilm story group to make sure that this show fits into the wider Star Wars canon?

                            Hossein Amini: They’re fantastic and absolutely devoted fans but they also know so much so that’s obviously wonderful and inspirational safety net to have. They are incredibly helpful to the process.

                            Michael Slavin: The director of the series is set to be Deborah Chow, who has done an episode on The Mandalorian, have you taken any influence from the tone they’re going for there where it is much more grounded-

                            Hossein Amini: I haven’t seen any of it except for the trailer. I’ve only seen as much as you have. I’m really excited to see it, but it hasn’t really affected what I’ve been doing particularly. I am a big fan of Rogue One, so the trailer for The Mandalorian looks fantastic.

                            Michael Slavin: So with regards to the series, its set in a period as we’ve spoken about where although there is so much to that period and so much intrigue and interest, it’s not one that’s been touched on too greatly within films and the TV shows outside of the cartoons and I was wondering are there any canon or non-canon Star Wars material that influenced the writing of this or have you just very much approached it from a personal standpoint of ignore the rest and just focus on your own story.

                            Hossein Amini: No, I’ve been researching madly for a really long time and also because I love the research, with other projects too, like I said I studied history so in a way the great thing about Star Wars is that obviously, it started with George Lucas but the fans and writers and comic book artists have all contributed massively to this world that is vast so I think as a fan I have a certain responsibility to that group and I think it’s really important to be respectful and yes I’ve always loved putting something of myself in as a writer but when it’s something like this I think you have to know it like you would a piece of history you would be studying with all the characters and what has come before and in this case what’s come after as well.

                            Michael Slavin: So, you’ve mentioned in the interview and in other interviews how much for you it’s character first and then the plot comes from that as opposed to how much is driven by plot nowadays. Apologies if I’m retreading ground, I just find this completely fascinating. Is that what with Obi-Wan attracted you was an opportunity to start with a character rather than here’s a plot now make characters for it?

                            Hossein Amini: It’s a combination of plot and the situation that the character finds themselves in, its possible that Obi-Wan in a different period- like I said before, they have to be in a situation that also makes them interesting so yes it does start with character but it’s a combination I guess of character and situation or crisis. I mean he is a fascinating character.

                            Michael Slavin: Is there anything outside of Star Wars that you could point to as a potential influence for the series? Is there anything else that you in your research have come across that you find has been a real source of inspiration in writing the series?

                            Hossein Amini: Again it’s lots of other sci-fis but also the spiritual aspects of Star Wars that like I said is something that’s always really fascinated me so, yeah I try to keep the research as varied as possible, going into all sorts of books about crisis and extraordinary bits of anthropological stuff and you get inspired by everything and that’s amazing about what George Lucas has done with Star Wars is that it’s just so full of- whether it’s Buddhism or theology or anthropology, it’s got so much it’s just so rich and I sort of feel again that with the research reading all the Star Wars stuff but also all the stuff that George Lucas himself read from 'a hero with a thousand faces' to all the studies he did from samurai costumes to weapons, there are masses to research.
                            "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post
                              Hossein Amini: I can’t say very much. The plan is to start shooting in July
                              For reference, the Netflix Marvel shows (10-13 episodes per season) took between 9 and 13 months between start of filming and release on Netflix.

                              This series is going to be six episodes so the shoot will definitely be shorter, but I'd still hazard a guess that we won't see this series until early- to mid-2021.
                              "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X