After serving as the home base for HBO’s Game of Thrones series, it seems Belfast is ready to swing its doors open to Star Wars.
According to the Belfast Telegraph, Lucasfilm and Disney plan to use Paint Hall Studios in Northern Ireland as its central hub for the Obi-Wan Anthology movie (tentative title: Kenobi: A Star Wars Story) in 2019, with one source claiming that George Lucas visited the cavernous studio just before Christmas.
We know Paint Hall Studios will become vacant later this year once Game of Thrones wraps production for the final time, though considering Lucas has all but retired from the filmmaking business since offloading Lucasfilm to Disney back in 2012, we struggle to believe that he is in any way involved in the Obi-Wan Kenobi spinoff.
“We’ve been told there will be work throughout 2019 because Star Wars is coming to Belfast,” says the report. “It was all very low key, only a few people knew that the old guy walking around the set was George Lucas. It was only when we were told about Star Wars coming here next year that it dawned on us that was why he was here before Christmas.”
The Belfast Telegraph goes on to claim that George Lucas was actually scouting locations in and around Belfast, indicating that Paint Hall Studios could be used as an alternative to Pinewood, the true HQ for Lucasfilm’s Star Wars franchise, come 2019.
Again, it’s a stretch. In fact, the studio is yet to openly confirm any real details about the mooted Obi-Wan spinoff, and we’re more inclined to believe Stephen Daldry’s Anthology pic will set up shop in Death Valley or California in order to properly capture the arid, sun-scorched plains of Tatooine.
One way or another, next up for that far-away galaxy is the launch of Solo: A Star Wars Story on May 25th, which will be packed to the brim with galactic rogues, spacefaring gangsters and the Mother of Dragons herself, Emilia Clarke.
