Long before “Obi-Wan Kenobi” became the limited series that inspired good ratings numbers and divisive discourse, it was planned as a film.
The box-office failure of “Solo: A Star Wars Story” essentially scuttled all then-current plans for spin-off films, with the ‘Kenobi’ project being one of the victims until it was retooled as a series.
“Collateral” and “Australia” scribe Stuart Beattie was one of the original writers on that film to the point that so much of his material was reused in the series that he scored writing credits on the first three and the final episode of the run.
Speaking to The Direct about his involvement, he revealed despite his credits he didn’t really work on the story in its TV series form:
“Joby [Harold, showrunner for ‘Obi-Wan’] came on and took my scripts and turned it from two hours into six. So, I did not work with them at all, I just got credit for the episodes because it was all my stuff.”
Beattie then explained that the film scripts he worked on tied to just the first of a planned trilogy of films about Kenobi:
“When I pitched my Obi-Wan story to Lucasfilm, I said, ‘There are actually three stories here. Because there are three different evolutions that the character has to make in order to go from Obi-Wan to Ben’.
The first one was the first movie, which was the show, which was, ‘Surrender to the will of the Force. Transport your will, surrender your will. Leave the kid alone.’
So then, the second [movie] was thinking about where Kenobi ends up. And one of the most powerful and probably the most powerful moment in all of Obi-Wan’s story is that moment where he sacrifices himself in ‘A New Hope.’ Great moment, you know, makes you cry.
But, if you stop and think about it, it’s a pretty sudden thing, to just kind of go be fighting a guy, to see Luke and go, ‘I’m gonna die.’ You know, that to me, that required forethought. That required pre-acceptance that this was going to happen.”
Beattie then explains the second story would see Obi-Wan coming to terms with his own mortality and with Qui-Gon warning him of a time when he’d have to sacrifice himself for the greater good:
“He’s recognizing he’s been on this journey already, and he’s waiting for this moment, and that’s how he’s able to make it so easily. To do this [sacrifice], and die. So that to me was the second evolution, the second film, the second story. So for me, if I have anything to do with the second season of ‘Obi-Wan,’ that’s the character evolution that I would take him on. That, to me, is really interesting. And like I said, universal.”
Beattie says he never formally worked on a second or third script for the planned trilogy. Right now it’s not clear if Lucasfilm wants a second season of “Obi-Wan Kenobi” or not even as the actors have all indicated they’re open to it and the series has done good numbers.
