Obi-Wan is on the run in the official trailer for the upcoming 6-episode Star Wars miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi releasing 27 May on Disney+.

by Thinus Ferreira

Obi-Wan is on the run in the official trailer that Disney+ has released for its upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi Star Wars drama series that will become available from 27 May.

Ewan McGregor is reprising his role, now as a hunted Jedi, and reunites with Hayden Christensen who is now Darth Vader in the 6-episode series which will see episodes released weekly, premiering with a double episode on 27 May.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is set 10 years after the events of 2005's Star Wars Episode III  - Revenge of the Sith, after which Emperor Palpatine ordered Stormtroopers to kill off most of the Jedi across the galaxy with Order 66.

Obi-Wan Kenobi escaped with Luke Skywalker and Leia, and is keeping a watchful eye over a very young Luke on the planet of Tatooine as the Galactic Empire hunts down the remaining Jedi.

In the new series, Disney+ viewers will see the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) and Inquisitor Reva (Moses Ingram) chase after Obi-Wan, while Obi-Wan has a more than frosty relationship with Luke's adoptive father, Uncle Owen Lars (Joel Edgerton).

Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi series with Ewan McGregor put on hold as Disney reduces script order and looks for a new writer.

by Thinus Ferreira

The planned Star Wars live-action Obi-Wan Kenobi drama series has been put on hold and the script order reduced as Disney is looking for a new writer.

According to The Hollywood Reporter pre-production on the new drama series for the Disney+ streaming service has been put on hold after the first couple of scripts from writer Hossein Amini have been scrapped.

Ewan McGregor who played Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the prequel film series will reprise his role in the TV series with director Deborah Chow but the initial scripts - revolving around how Obi-Wan takes a young Luke Skywalker under his wing - wasn't good enough.

The script order for the as-yet-untitled Obi-Wan series has now been reduced from 6 episodes to 4 episodes. Disney had no comment.

Disney+'s The Mandalorian as the first live-action Star Wars series made its debut in December to huge success, praised by viewers as well as critics and has been renewed for a second season.

Ewan McGregor told IGN that the series delay won't change the release date of the show in 2021.

"I've read about 80, 90 percent of what they've written so far, and it’s really, really good. Instead of shooting this August, they just want to start shooting in January, that's all. Nothing more dramatic than that."

"It often happens in projects, they just wanted to push it to next year. It will have the same release date, I don’t think it will affect the release date. They're still shooting towards having the show release when it was going to be originally."

The new series is set 8 years after the events of Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Disney releases first poster and trailer for its Star Wars drama series, The Mandalorian coming to Disney+ that South Africans won't be able to see legally.

Disney has released the first poster and official trailer for the first live-action Star Wars drama series, The Mandalorian, that will start on its upcoming new video streaming service Disney+ on 12 November.

Meanwhile Ewan McGregor who appeared at Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, California in the United States that kicked off on Friday, confirmed last week's news that he will be reprising his Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi role from the Star Wars films for a new Disney+ drama series that will start filming in 2020.

Disney announced in the past week that it will launch Disney+ on 12 November in the United States, Canada and the Netherlands and a week later in Australia and New Zealand.

With The Walt Disney Company that decided not to launch its new subscription video-on-demand service (SVOD) in Africa and South Africa, many South Africans in the week said that they would love to pay Disney for the Disney+ service that will cost around R100 per month in each of these countries.

Disney doesn't consider South Africa to be one of its "major regions" in the world according to its latest investors presentation with South Africa that might get Disney+ only from around 2022 or later.

South Africans indicated that they will likely resort to using illegal downloads and torrent sites to watch episodes of the Jon Favreau written and directed series that will see a new episode of The Mandalorian made available weekly, along with an avalanche of new and original Disney and Marvel content specifically produced for Disney+.

Disney+ as a new video streaming service despite any marketing or publicity in South Africa already enjoys a large awareness under South Africans viewers and consumers.

Disney+ was the number one topic of discussion and elicited the most questions from the media - with no answers about when it's coming to South Africa - at Disney's annual Disney Africa 2019/2020 content showcase that was held on Tuesday in Cape Town.

If or when Disney+ is to launch in South Africa, it will compete with MultiChoice's Showmax from its Connected Video division, as well as Netflix South Africa, Amazon Prime Video and Cell C black along with some smaller services all trying to grow their SVOD customer market share.



The Mandalorian will bring backstory and new characters to flesh out the time period and events that transpired 7 years after the Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi film just after the fall of the Empire and the rise of the First Order and 23 years before the events of The Force Awakens, with executive producer Jon Favreau already busy writing the scripts for the second season.

"I came in and pitched Kathleen Kennedy a version of a show that took place after Return of the Jedi," Jon Favreau said on the D23 stage. "Chaos reigns because there's no central government. It's a world like the old Samurai movies and Westerns."

The Mandalorian follows the adventures of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic, send on a mission to collect and retrieve something of great value.

Besides Pedro Pascal as the title character the series has Nick Nolte, Werner Herzog, Gina Carano (as Cara Dune), Giancarlo Esposito (Mof Gideon), Emily Swallow, Carl Weathers (as Greef Carga), Omid Abtahi, Taika Waititi (the droid IG-11) in the cast.

The Black Panther composer and recent Oscar and Grammy winner Ludwig Göransson is responsible for the musical score of the 10-episode first season that has a reported budget of over $100 million.


Obi-Wan Kenobi series
At D23 the Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy who is producing the new Obi-Wan Kenobi Star Wars drama series as well, told the crowd that "We have all the scripts written, we're ready to start shooting next year".

The as-yet-untitled Obi-Wan Kenobi series will be the third live-action Star Wars drama series made for Disney+.

Beyond The Mandalorian with Pedro Pascal, Disney also commissioned a series based on the Cassian Andor character character with Diego Luna back to reprise the role he played in the Star Wars Rogue One film, and with the show that will be a prequel series.

The hugely popular Star Wars: The Clone Wars animation series is also returning for a new season, this time to Disney+ that will become available from February 2020.

'I have a good feeling about this': Ewan McGregor set to return as Obi-Wan Kenobi in a new Star Wars live-action drama series for Disney+.

The Scottish actor Ewan McGregor (48) is set to reprise his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Lucasfilm's Star Wars film series for a new live-action Star Wars drama series for Disney's new video streaming service, Disney+ that will launch on 22 November in the United States.

Disney has not put out a statement about Ewan McGregor's return to the Star Wars universe and the new as-yet-untitled series, but the Hollywood trade publications all reported his attachment to a new series in development that will see him reprise the role he played in the three Star Wars prequel films, The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005).

The official announcement about Ewan McGregor's Star Wars drama series is likely being kept for Disney's annual D23 Expo that will take place from 23 August in Anaheim, California in the United States.

Ewan McGregor was originally in talks for a series of Star Wars feature films that would revolve around the legendary Jedi Knight character of Obi-Wan Kenobi but that plan was scuppered after Disney and Lucasfilm's stand-alone Han Solo origin story, Solo: A Star Wars Story, was a box office disappointment in the United States and internationally.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series would be the third live-action Star Wars drama series commissioned by Disney from Lucasfilm for its Disney+ subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service, following The Mandalorian from Jon Favreau starring Pedro Pascal that will debut on Disney+ at launch.

Disney also commissioned an as-yet-untitled series based on the Cassian Andor character introduced in the Rogue One film, with Diego Luna who will be reprising his role in the prequel series from that film, alongside Alan Tudyk as the droid K-2S0. Stephen Schiff is the showrunner.

Disney+ won't be available in South Africa or Africa as a streaming service until at least 2022 according to Disney's investors' presentation it did earlier this year.

A new hope however exists that Disney will in the meantime while it doesn't have a presence in sub-Saharan Africa as a streaming service, distribute and make the original programming created for Disney+ available internationally to buyers like MultiChoice, M-Net (DStv 101), and possibly even MultiChoice's own video streaming service, Showmax.