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Obi-Wan Kenobi series starring Ewan McGregor gets premiere date

The next Star Wars show coming to Disney Plus sees Ewan McGregor's exiled Jedi master face Hayden Christensen's Darth Vader.

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Disney released a new poster for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series Wednesday. 

 Disney Plus

Disney Plus will premiere its Obi-Wan Kenobi series on May 25. The series, one of several Star Wars franchise shows on the streaming service, brings back Ewan McGregor as the fabled Jedi master, alongside Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader. The pair last faced off in the Star Wars prequel trilogy of movies nearly two decades ago. 

The news of the show's release date was a nugget nestled in Disney's call to discuss its latest financial results Wednesday. A poster was also revealed at the same time, showing McGregor's older Obi-Wan striding the shifting sands of Tatooine with his lightsaber in hand.

The series is set 10 years after Revenge of the Sith, in which Kenobi grievously wounded his troubled apprentice Anakin Skywalker. At the trilogy's climax, Anakin became more machine than man and turned to the Dark Side as the Emperor's acolyte Darth Vader while his children Luke and Leia were hidden from him.

In the series, McGregor and Christensen are joined by Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse, who appeared in the prequels as the family who raised young Luke Skywalker on the twin-sunned desert planet Tatooine. Also in the cast, playing undisclosed roles, are Moses Ingram, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell and Benny Safdie.

The Obi-Wan announcement came the same day as the most recent Star Wars franchise entry, The Book of Boba Fett, wrapped up its series finale. While Disney Plus has leaned on high-profile Marvel series lately to stoke interest in its service's exclusive originals, it was a Star Wars original, The Mandalorian, that put Disney Plus' original series spinoffs on the map. Season 3 of The Mandalorian is also in the works.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is expected to be a single-season miniseries of six hour-long episodes. Like the rest of Disney's original series, new installments are expected to be released weekly every Wednesday. 

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