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Disney killed a Star Wars Kylo Ren movie starring Adam Driver from the director of Ocean's Eleven and Black Bag
Adam Driver, Steven Soderbergh and Lucasfilm wanted to make a follow-up to The Rise of Skywalker, but Disney bosses said no
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The idea of bringing Adam Driver back to a Galaxy Far, Far Away to play Ben Solo in a movie set after 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker made by the screenwriter of The Bourne Ultimatum and Contagion as well as the director of the Ocean’s Eleven movies might sound like a no-brainer to many people, but not to Disney — it turns out that Walt Disney bosses killed that very movie even though everyone involved was excited to make it.
Driver revealed the sad story of The Hunt for Ben Solo in a recent interview with the Associated Press, revealing that he “always was interested in doing another Star Wars,” feeling that Kylo Ren’s journey wasn’t fully finished at the end of Rise of Skywalker — and that he approached filmmaker Steven Soderbergh about continuing it.
“I had been talking about doing another one since 2021,” Driver revealed. “Kathleen [Kennedy, Lucasfilm president] had reached out. I always said: With a great director and a great story, I’d be there in a second. I loved that character and loved playing him.”
Soderbergh and his wife Jules Asner — who wrote the movie Logan Lucky under the pen name Rebecca Blunt — pitched a story to Kennedy, Lucasfilm chief creative officer Dave Filoni, and Lucasfilm vice president Cary Beck, and the project got a green light for development. The director then brought in Scott Z. Burns to write a screenplay, which Driver described as “one of the coolest [expletive] scripts I had ever been a part of”… and then, nothing.
“We presented the script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea. They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it,” Driver told the AP. “We took it to [Walt Disney CEO] Bob Iger and [Disney co-chairman] Alan Bergman and they said no. They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that.”
Soderbergh, in a statement to the AP, added, “I really enjoyed making the movie in my head. I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.”
Had the movie gone ahead, it would have been the first Star Wars movie to be released in theaters after The Rise of Skywalker, and the first Star Wars story in any medium set after the events in that movie. As things currently stand, that latter title will now be held by 2027’s Star Wars: Starfighter, announced at Star Wars Celebration Tokyo.
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