Yesterday, a couple of things were revealed that could give a little more hope that the Kenobi movie might actually be filming next year, despite chatter of it’s doom.
First, Disney announced they were moving the release date for Indiana Jones 5 from July 10th, 2020 to July 9th, 2021. This will likely mean due to the rewrites from Solo’s Jonathan Kasdan that shooting on the Steven Spielberg film won’t likely begin until 2020, meaning that Lucasfilm might be currently without an official release in 2020.
It doesn’t seem logical that Lucasfilm would just sit on their hands next year and just not make a movie.
Steven had announced during a speech eariler in the year that Indy 5 would begin filming on April 2019 in the United Kingdom. Funny, because Kenobi conveniently was eyeing that exact start date and Indiana Jones 5 seemingly has vacated that schedule for the time being.
Secondly, Omega Underground reported yesterday that Ewan McGregor is now expected to begin filming on Warner Bros’ Shining sequel Doctor Sleep on September 24th in Atlanta, Georgia as director Mike Flanagan has already secured his production designer and cinematographer. First cues the project is now deep in pre- production.
Assuming a horror thriller like Doctor Sleep will shoot for around three to four months, it likely wouldn’t have a huge impact if Kenobi began filming in April 2019 or even started later in the summer like J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode IX.
The “problems” concerning Kenobi seemingly have stemmed from talk that director Stephen Daldry (The Crown, The Hours, The Reader) had exited the film. He was neither announced or confirmed by Lucasfilm, so he never actually had the gig “officially”. Word has been that Daldry had been out of mix since last December and seven months later the studio could have very well found a replacement or still on the hunt for a director.
There was talk that Stephen had scheduling conflicts with Universal’s feature adaption of the musical Wicked, which he was attached to before he was ever linked for Kenobi talks. An assumption could be made that he was already too busy with Wicked and didn’t actually leave for back-to-drawing-board creative reasons, as some may have suggested. Quite possibly he may have just met with the studio and that’s as far as it went.
I’m not sure why folks would automatically think Kenobi would be dead in the water without a director. Lucasfilm only last year replaced Colin Trevorrow and his script. Last we checked Episode IX was still on track to shoot this summer despite it’s delays last year as casting heats up. The studio doesn’t seem too bothered by replacing directors as they’ve proven over the last couple of films.
When it comes to the assumption something else set in the Star Wars universe could be ready to shoot next year instead of Kenobi might be more of logistics issue.
Rian Johnson‘s Star Wars trilogy seemingly still has to be written/mapped-out and might need a bit more development time because it would be a new corner of the universe (teases aside). I’m not entirely sure rushing him would be the best idea.
Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are currently busy with post-production of the massive final season and I don’t see how they jump the line either. While they could be writing nothing suggests they have a director or have started any level of prep.
James Mangold announced on Twitter that Ford vs Ferrari begins filming today, so Boba Fett doesn’t look like it will shoot anytime soon. As we previously pointed out Fett likely wouldn’t begin filming until 2020 at the earliest.
With this in mind, I’m not inclined to believe they’d scrap the film entirely or rush something else into production just to replace it. This doesn’t seem to be a Josh Trank situation as far as we know. As it’s been pointed out, Kenobi was indeed in pre-production.
I’m very curious why Lucasfilm has kept radio-silence for this long when they could have easily cleared things up with a press release. We’ll just have to wait for some official word from the studio in the coming months.