The Obi-Wan Kenobi series could have comprised three feature films, according to Stuart Beattie, one of the show’s credited writers, who was recently interviewed by The Direct and revealed that the series was originally pitched as a trilogy of movies in the vein of the original, prequel, and sequel trilogies. Beattie mentioned that both Disney and Ewan McGregor were “absolutely” on board with the idea of Obi-Wan Kenobi being a new trilogy, but that the studio ended up going another way after witnessing the disappointing performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story, which Lucasfilm released in May 2018. That movie reportedly had a budget of at least $275 million but ended up making only around $392 million worldwide. Beattie also provided some detail regarding the three Obi-Wan films that he originally pitched to Lucasfilm, each of which were designed to trace the character’s evolution from the end of Revenge of the Sith to A New Hope.
Right, so not at all, none. I wrote the film that they based the show on. So, yeah. I spent like a year, year-and-a-half working on it. And then, when the decision was made not to make any more spin-off films after Solo came out, I left the project and went on to other things. Joby 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.
So when I pitched my Obi-Wan story to Lucasfilm, I said, “There’s actually three stories here. Because there’s three different evolutions that the character has to make in order to go from Obi-Wan to Ben.” And 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.
Source: The Direct