Obi-Wan Kenobi TV Series: 'King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword' Scribe Takes Over As Writer

Joby Harold, whose writing credits include Awake, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and Zack Snyder's upcoming Army of the Dead, has been hired as the new writer of the untitled Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+. Get the details below.Variety has the news, reporting that Harold is taking over as the show's writer after the show was shut down earlier this year. Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini turned in scripts, sets were built, staff were hired, and star Ewan McGregor was back on board...but Lucasfilm decided to pull the plug and start from scratch, throwing out Amini's scripts and beginning the search for a new writer to come in and take over. That search, which at one time reportedly included The Mandalorian veterans Dave Filoni and Christopher Yost as options, is now over, as the studio has hired Joby Harold to get things back on track.

Harold is an unexpected choice for this job, since he's arguably better known as a producer than a writer at this point. He's produced or executive produced Edge of Tomorrow, Robin Hood, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and the WGN America series Underground, among other things. On the writing side, he wrote and directed his first feature film, Awake, back in 2007, and a decade passed before his script for King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword was eventually produced. That film was supposed to launch a six-movie franchise, but didn't perform well enough to even get one sequel, let alone five. Army of the Dead is in post-production and he's on board to write another Transformers project, but those are the only four writing credits listed. This is the first time he'll be writing for television.

McGregor and director Deborah Chow (Better Call Saul, The Mandalorian) are still signed on. Details of the revamped version of the scripts are obviously being guarded incredibly closely at this point, but we assume it will still feature a young Luke Skywalker in some capacity. (If it does not feature a young Luke, that would be a massive step for Disney, who has clung to its pre-established Star Wars characters as much as humanly possible since purchasing Lucasfilm in 2012.) The earlier iteration of the series was going to be set eight years after Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and was rumored to feature a bearded Jar-Jar Binks, but it's unclear if any of those ideas will make it into these new scripts. Hopefully the second time is the charm on this one.