With filming well underway on Star Wars: Episode VII And A Little Lady, and most attention turning to who will be cast and who will need to get better friends, it is a dark time for the spreading of speculation and rumors. But a new hope has arrived via Making Star Wars, where the rebellion against empirical knowledge lives on with a new report suggesting that Obi-Wan Kenobi may be one of the many Star Wars characters to get his very own spinoff movie. (And indeed, who is more foolish: the anonymously sourced blog report, or the blog that reports it?)
While the site’s source says that the plan for the standalone Star Wars films were initially to “stay away from any Jedi or Sith characters” (save for the Yoda spinoff that was initially rumored, we guess) those plans may have changed—thanks, as most Star Wars decisions are, to people voicing their opinions on the Internet. Earlier this year, Obi-Wan won the This Is Madness 2014 bracket tournament at the official Star Wars website, likely after Han Solo was sidelined with an injury. And now, because of that temporarily proven popularity, the report says, “An art team is now working with a writer on concepts for an Obi-Wan movie.” Presumably this movie would cover the events in Obi-Wan’s life between Episodes III and IV, when he was hiding in exile out in the Tattooine desert, using his mastery for clouding the mind by changing his first name to “Ben,” and eagerly watching a young boy grow into a man—but you know, for the galaxy.
Lending some—if not credence, then at least encouragement—to the report is that Ewan McGregor has already said he’d definitely be up for returning to the lucrative franchise without having to share any screen time with Hayden Christensen or Jamaican space rabbits. “I think it’s a good idea,” McGregor told MTV News. “The only bit that I could get away with doing is after the last one I made, Episode III, before Alec Guinness, there’s that period where he’s in the desert. That might be my window, there, to tell that story. I don’t know what he did in the desert. We could make up some stuff. Could be quite exciting. I’d be up for it, for sure, of course.”
Also of course, this is still just an anonymous rumor about making up some stuff for a theoretical project that’s only in the concept stages. But given the many decades of stories Disney is hoping to mine from Star Wars, it’s hard to believe a film about Obi-Wan Kenobi—or any reasonably popular character from its universe—isn’t being considered for a spinoff. Besides, Obi-Wan’s story on Tattooine has the element that every good Star Wars film needs: lots and lots of sand.