Ewan McGregor Is Here To Assuage Fears Regarding Delayed Obi-Wan Series

Star Wars fans may have felt a recent disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. According to reports, the much-anticipated Obi-Wan Kenobi series has been put on hold. But Obi-Wan himself, Ewan McGregor, who played the iconic space wizard in the Star Wars prequel films, says the show's still got a few tricks up there sleeves.

Yesterday afternoon, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the series would be delayed until new scripts were written. According to reports, the show, which until now was supposedly centered around Kenobi keeping baby Luke safe on Tatooine, resembled another babysitting-centric space opera, The Mandalorian, too closely.

Luckily, Ewan McGregor, who certainly has a knack for making Star Wars fans feel at ease (he's still one of the only thing fans seem to agree on when it comes to the prequels), came to the rescue. At a Birds of Prey event last night, he told Variety that shooting just got pushed back a few months and it's not a big deal.

“I think we start shooting early next year as opposed to summer this year," said McGreggor. "I think the scripts are great. They’re in really good shape. They want them to be better. I think we keep our same airdate. All good. I didn’t realize until we got here tonight and everybody is going, ‘Oh, my god!’ But it’s not really as dramatic as it might seem."

He went into greater detail on the delay, speaking with IGN He explained that "instead of shooting this August, they would start in January."

"It’s just slid to next year, that’s all. The scripts were really good. I think now that Episode IX came out and everyone at Lucasfilm's got more time to spend on the writing, they felt like they wanted more time to spend on the writing. I’ve read about eighty, ninety 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 film [show] release when it was going to be originally.

McGregor did not comment on reports that the show had been cut from six episodes to four, but if that means four great episodes instead of six lackluster ones, the cut isn't such a bad thing.

So while it's fair to still have a bad feeling about this, it's not that uncommon for big productions, like, say, anything involving Star Wars to be delayed for tweaking. Luckily, McGreggor and Mandalorian-director Deborah Chow are still attached to the series, and as long as their involved, the show still has the higher ground.