While many “Star Wars” fans were probably not aware of filmmaker Deborah Chow before last week, they sure are now. After directing the third episode of “The Mandalorian,” the filmmaker has suddenly become a hero to the fandom, not only as the first female to direct live-action “Star Wars,” but also being the first director on ‘Mandalorian’ to prove that the epic feel of the franchise can translate well to streaming TV. But what people are really excited for now is Chow’s next “Star Wars” project — the “Obi-Wan” streaming series coming to Disney+.
And speaking to the NY Times (via io9), Chow goes into specifics about why she’s excited to tackle the new series and why her experience on “The Mandalorian” has prepared her for “Obi-Wan.”
Chow believes that she’s received great training for “Obi-Wan” while working as a director on “The Mandalorian.” However, she believes that there’s much more to being a good “Star Wars” filmmaker than just working on the franchise previously.
“So much of it just feeling it and understanding it, on an instinctual level, to know what’s right and what’s wrong with it,” she said. “And there’s so much knowledge — every prop, every costume is important. Every detail really matters.”
As for the actual plot of “Obi-Wan,” that’s being kept under wraps for now. That being said, Chow said she thinks that there’s no way you can satisfy the story in the confines of a single film, making a streaming series the only real option.
“The situation is so complex both for [Obi-Wan] 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,” the filmmaker said. “There is so much going on between [‘Revenge of the Sith’ and ‘A New Hope’] that hasn’t been explored.”
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She continued, “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.”
With her first episode of “The Mandalorian” premiering last Friday, fans are really excited to see what Chow can do with more “Star Wars” material. She’s already proven to be very capable storyteller in the franchise and keeping the action/feel appropriately epic. So, it’s no real shock that Lucasfilm chose her to take the helm of “Obi-Wan.”
The series has no official release date, but it’s rumored to be going into production next summer, leading us to believe that a 2021 launch is expected.