Posted in: Disney+, Preview, Star Wars, streaming, TV | Tagged: bleeding cool, Boston, cable, Deborah Chow, disney, Ewan McGregor, obi-wan, preview, star wars, star wars kenobi, streaming, television, The Mandalorian, tv

Star Wars: Kenobi Sets Jan 2021 Boston Filming; Summary Posted: Report

Published Fri, 04 Dec 2020 08:25:02 -0600

by Ray Flook

Last updated Fri, 04 Dec 2020 08:29:03 -0600

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What a difference a little less than two months make- reportedly. When we last checked in with Disney+'s upcoming Ewan McGregor-starring Obi-Wan series, McGregor was on The Graham Norton Show revealing that production on the project was set to begin in March 2021. Now thanks to some reporting from WBZ TV, Boston's CBS affiliate. In the clip below, we learn that a posting by the Film & Television Industry Alliance on productionlist.com lists "Star Wars: Kenobi" (we're liking the title) will be filming in Boston starting January 4, 2021. No further information was listed, and there is also a shooting scheduled in London for that same date.

star wars — Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) Ewan McGregor (as Obi-Wan Kenobi)

That said, these things are always in flux- and with the pandemic still raging in the U.S., schedules have become very fluid. Of special note is the project summary that was included: "Tatooine-a harsh desert world where farmers toil in the heat of two suns while trying to protect themselves and their loved ones from the marauding Tusken Raiders. A backwater planet on the edge of civilized space. And an unlikely place to find a Jedi Master in hiding, or an orphaned infant boy on whose tiny shoulders rests the future of a galaxy."

Preparing for a series he says is "a long time coming," McGregor revealed in an interview with Empire earlier this year that he's more excited to play the iconic character now than he was in the last two prequel films. "I'm more excited about doing this one than I was doing the second and third one that we did before," the actor explained. One of the reasons for the excitement: his director. "I'm just excited about working with Deborah Chow [director], and the storylines are going to be really good I think. I'm just excited to play him again. It's been long enough since I played him before," said McGregor.

McGregor's also looking forward to getting some time filming on The Volume, the high-resolution video wall tech that allows for large-scale artificial environment creation used by The Mandalorian. "The first three [Star Wars films] I did were really at the very beginning of digital photography," the actor explains. "We had a camera with an umbilical cord to a tent, it was like back to the beginning of movies where the camera didn't move very much because there was so much hardware attached to it. Now we're going to be able to really create stuff without swathes of green-screen and blue-screen, which becomes very tedious for the actor."

Director Deborah Chow moves from directing episodes of The Mandalorian to directing the entire run of the series with directorial "geek cred" that also includes American Gods, Better Call Saul, Lost in Space, Jessica Jones, Reign, and Mr. Robot. In April, Joby Harold (Army of the Dead) was tapped to replace Hossein Amini (Drive) after reports surfaced that Lucasfilm president and Obi-Wan producer Kathleen Kennedy was dissatisfied with Amini's scripts. Allegedly, Kennedy was concerned that having the lead character serve as a mentor to a young Luke and/or Leia skewed too close to The Mandalorian-The Child aka "Baby Yoda" dynamic.