(Photo/The Walt Disney Company)

By Cameron Merritt

Boston, Massachusetts may be the Hub of the Universe, but it’s its English namesake that’ll be featured in a galaxy far, far away

According to a listing posted Nov. 30 on productionlist.com, the website of the Film & Television Industry Alliance (FTIA), filming for the highly-anticipated Disney+ Star Wars: Kenobi is slated to begin Jan. 4 in Boston as well as across the pond in London.

However, an update to that listing was done on Dec. 5, as reported by WBZ, that clarified they meant to show filming would be taking place in Boston, Lincolnshire, a city of a little over 35,000 people on the English east coast from where many of the original Puritan settlers of Boston, Massachusetts originated and from where the more populous American city got its name.

This is the first time a production of the Star Wars Universe has been filmed in Boston, where as all three trilogies and as well as Rogue One have had scenes shot on location or in studio in and around Greater London as well as in other parts of England including Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cumbria, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.

The listing gives little details about the filming locations in the two cities, including whether or not these will be studio shots or utilize location shots, but provides a brief summary of the project.

“Tatooine-a harsh desert world where farmers toil in the heat of two suns while trying to protect themselves and their loved ones from the marauding Tusken Raiders,” the summary reads. “A backwater planet on the edge of civilized space. And an unlikely place to find a Jedi Master in hiding, or an orphaned infant boy on whose tiny shoulders rests the future of a galaxy.”

The series, which will see actor Ewan McGregor reprise his role as Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, is rumored to take place eight years after the fall of the end of the Clone Wars and the fall of the Galactic Republic and his padawan Anakin Skywalker’s turn to Darth Vader and follow Kenobi’s life on Tatooine as he overlooks and protects the young Luke Skywalker from afar. No official release date is set yet, and few other details are currently known about the series, though it seems production is moving along faster than previously thought, with McGregor telling The Graham Norton Show back in Oct. that filming was expected to begin in March 2021.

While neither Boston nor London particularly resemble the desert planet of Tatooine, exterior scenes of which were largely filmed in Tunisia in the Skywalker saga, it can be assumed studio locations will be largely utilized, though the city landscapes could potentially be utilized and digitally altered to form the cities where the seedy underworld of the infamous Outer Rim planet thrives. The Mandalorian, which has by and far been Disney+’s most successful original series to date, and Lucasfilm’s special effects division Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) have received significant acclaim for their use of digitally created backdrops and virtual landscapes that have completely transformed filming locations into the far off planets of the Star Wars Universe, and it can be expected the same will be followed, if not expanded upon, with Kenobi, especially considering the series is slated to be direct and executive produced by Deborah Chow, who directed “Chapter 3: The Sin” and “Chapter 7: The Reckoning” of The Mandalorian.

While it’s unfortunate to see that Massachusetts’ largest city won’t be playing a role in the upcoming Star Wars series, the mistake is understandable as the more famous Boston over the past decade has seen itself become a hub of Hollywood productions, with numerous major films having been filmed in the city and around Massachusetts in the past few years, and most recently the upcoming Netflix Original Movie Don’t Look Up, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence along with Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Arian Grande, Timothée Chalamet, Matthew Perry, Kid Cudi and Tyler Perry, which has been filming in numerous locations in the Greater Boston area and is slated to continue filming in the area through February.

So while this update may come as a disappointment to Star Wars fans in New England, on the bright side it means production the Kenobi series will finally be on the way.