Way back in the dark ages of 2017, it was reported that Stephen Daldry was in negotiations to direct a “Star Wars” film based around Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Lucasfilm never made an official announcement. While we wait for “The Mandalorian,” everyone’s desperate for new details on the finally-officially-announced Obi-Wan Kenobi series for Disney+. Series writer Hossein Amini spoke about his involvement in Daldry’s original film incarnation, and about turning the story into a longer series.
Even though it was never officially announced by Lucasfilm, Amini confirmed in an interview with Discussing Film that he met with Daldry for a Kenobi movie. “I was initially contacted by the original director for the film version, Stephen Daldry,” Amini said. “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.” Amini also confirmed that he’s been attached to the project for almost two years, as Ewan McGregor confessed recently.
Amini also talked about why the story works better as a TV series than a movie, saying “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,” Amini explained. “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 3 and 4 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.”
It is interesting that while Amini remained with the project and is now working on the TV series, Stephen Daldry exited the project. It will be “The Mandalorian” director Deborah Chow who is set to direct all episodes of the still-untitled “Obi-Wan Kenobi” show.