By Travis Johnson
The Hollywood Reporter is saying that Stephen Daldry, director of The Hours and Billy Elliott, is being courted to bring an Ob-Wan Kenobi movie to the screen as part of the A Star Wars Story stable that was inaugurated last year with Rogue One.
Famously played by Sir Alec Guinness in the original trilogy, and Ewan McGregor in the prequels, Obi- Wan “Ben” Kenobi is… ah, you guys know who he is, let’s not kid ourselves. This project is in the very early stages of development, with Daldry having not yet even signed on the dotted line, so any commentary on the nature of the film would just be irresponsible wild guessing.
So, let’s do that very thing.
There’s been no word as to whether Ewan McGregor has been approached to reprise the role but, let’s face it, Lucasfilm would have to be nuts not to get him back, and Rents has gone on record to say he’d be keen:
So, that’s probably a lock.
As for the story itself, we’d be happy to see a film set wholly on Tatooine, bringing to the forefront the Western elements that have always been a part of Star Wars’ DNA. In point of fact, the current Marvel Star Wars comics series has delved into this area, and those books are now considered canon. Here, check it out:
So, a leathery, middle-aged Obi-Wan saving homesteaders from bandits/alien gunmen/Jabba the Hutt’s goons? We’d be happy with that, but the Shane model is well and truly wedded to Logan at this point, so maybe that’s not the way to go. Tell you what, though, Westerns and samurai movies have been feeding off each other for yonks, and given that George Lucas has acknowledged his debt to Kurosawa in the past, perhaps the smart play would be a Tatooine riff on Yojimbo/A Fistful of Dollars, with a sly Ben Kenobi playing two sets of villains off against each other. We’d pay cash money to see that.
As we said, we’re just spitballing here. Hopefully we’ll have some actual news before too long.
