Ewan McGregor On Obi-Wan Series, Using Epic's Tech, And The Luke Skywalker Rumors

Ewan McGregor has shared some new insight on the upcoming Obi-Wan series for Disney+, saying in a new interview that he is particularly impressed by the technology that the production company is using to create virtual sets.

As announced previously, Lucasfilm is working with Fortnite studio Epic Games and Star Wars effects company Industrial Light and Magic on new tech called StageCraft that uses Epic's Unreal Engine to project scenes onto LED screens surrounding the physical set. He also touched on the Luke Skywalker rumors and being in a better place in his life.

This allows the producers to create seemingly any type of environment that actors can actually see instead of having to envision it in their mind with a green/blue screen.

McGregor told The Hollywood Reporter that he was working almost exclusively with bluescreens on Revenge of the Sith, and it was far from ideal, which is why he's happy to film Obi-Wan in a new way.

"After three or four months of that, it just gets really tedious--especially when the scenes are … I don't want to be rude, but it's not Shakespeare," he said of the earlier Star Wars films from George Lucas. "There's not something to dig into in the dialogue that can satisfy you when there's no environment there. It was quite hard to do."

For the Obi-Wan series, McGregor is excited to get to work using the new StageCraft technology. "They project [the virtual backgrounds] onto this massive LED screen. So if you're in a desert, you're standing in the middle of a desert. If you're in the snow, you're surrounded by snow," he said. "And if you're in a cockpit of a starfighter, you're in space. It's going to feel so much more real."

Production on Obi-Wan hasn't started yet, but McGregor has done some screen tests with director Deborah Chow (Better Call Saul, American Gods) and "other people." McGregor said Chow is a "really good director." As for who else he's done screen tests with, could one of them be a young Luke Skywalker?

"That's very possible," he said. "I don't know."

Overall, McGregor said he's really excited to get started on Obi-Wan. "Maybe more so than the first ones, because I'm older--I just turned 50-- and I'm just in a much better place," he said.

The Obi-Wan series is one of 10 new Star Wars shows coming to Disney+. It was recently announced that Maya Erskine (Plus One, Pen15) had joined the cast. Additionally, Hayden Christensen is back as Anakin Skywalker.