“Star Wars: Episode VII” production is in full swing, and so is the “Star Wars” rumor mill.
It’s been reported for a while now that Disney/Lucasfilm will release three spinoff movies over the next few years, each said to focus on individual characters. Two of the rumored characters getting spinoff movies are Boba Fett and Han Solo. And, on Friday, September 12, fan site Making Star Wars added a third character to the spinoff rumor list.
“I’ve heard from quite a few people now that an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie is in the works,” an unnamed source tells the website. “For the spin-off movies they were initially going to stay away from any Jedi or Sith characters. But I’m hearing now that because of the popularity of Obi-Wan (fans recently voting for him on the official website etc) that an art team is now working with a writer on concepts for an Obi-Wan movie.”
Obi-Wan did indeed win StarWars.com’s “This is Madness” tournament earlier this year. This is the “Star Wars” version of the NCAA’s March Madness, where fans voted to determine the victors of paired competitions. In the 2014 “This is Madness” competition, Obi-Wan Kenobi faced off against Darth Vader and won with 59% of the votes.
Popularity aside, ScreenCrush points out potential issues with an Obi-Wan Kenobi spinoff movie. “The problem here is that Obi-Wan is dead so the films couldn’t take place during the ‘Star Wars: Episode 7‘ universe, nor really during the original trilogy,” the site explains. “We saw a young Obi-Wan (played by Ewan McGregor) in Episodes I-III, so the only time period left to mine would be between ‘Revenge of the Sith’ and ‘A New Hope’ (and that would mean the return of Ewan McGregor). That’s all well and good, but that would essentially make an Obi-Wan movie a sequel to ‘Revenge of the Sith’ and, as far as we’ve heard, that’s when ‘Star Wars Rebels’ takes place.”
A previously “leaked” timeline shows “Star Wars” projects running through 2020, with no mention of an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie. So, if this spinoff movie rumor actually materializes, its release could potentially be at least seven years away.
