Late last year came the news about actor Adam Driver and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh’s rejected “The Hunt for Ben Solo” film. This week, Driver has spoken some more about the missed opportunity and the fan reaction to it.
Driver, Soderbergh and writer Rebecca Blunt teamed up to develop a film that would’ve taken place after the events of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and followed Driver’s Ben Solo/Kylo Ren on a redemptive path.
However, it was revealed that Disney’s top brass (namely Bob Iger and Alan Bergman) rejected it despite everyone at Lucasfilm (including Kathleen Kennedy) being pleased with the project.
A large fan movement has been pushing for the project’s resurrection, but Disney chiefs have remained firm in their stance about not moving forward with the project. Current “Star Wars” CCO Dave Filoni, in August, confirmed the project is absolutely dead.
In a new interview with Rich Eisen, Driver was asked where things stand with the project. He discussed that and the fan reaction to the project:
“Yeah, it’s over. No more Star Wars. We tried. We tried to do one more. They were like, ‘No, he’s dead.’ We worked on it… Steven Soderbergh was going to do it. We worked on it for a few years.
Really and earnestly, for two years we got a script together that was really good with Scott Burns and Rebecca Blunt, and Soderbergh and I. We all worked on it. It was awesome. It was really cool. I don’t get to decide.
If they wanted to, fine, but it’s not our call. I think the ship has sailed, though. The fan response to it was pretty incredible. I didn’t expect that it was going to be billboards and people flying planes over Disney and things like that. That was pretty cool.”
“Star Wars” is instead going with filmmaker Jon Watts and writer Simon Kinberg to continue the Skywalker Saga with “Star Wars Episode X”, which is currently in development.
