We know of many cancelled Star Wars movie projects at this point, the brand having been somewhat adrift since 2018. While that’s about to change with The Mandalorian and Grogu out in May of 2026, we are now learning of even more projects that were killed off. One of them is a Ben Solo movie Adam Driver and director Steven Soderbergh developed and brought to Lucasfilm and Disney.
This first-time news was shared in an AP interview with Driver, who discussed what happened with the movie. It was “one of the coolest f***ing scripts I had ever been a part of,” said Driver. What happened?
- Driver felt there was unfinished business for Kylo Ren after the events of his trilogy (and “merging with the force” death to save Rey).
- Steven Soderbergh and Rebecca Blunt outlined a script they brought to Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy, Cary Beck and Dave Filoni.
- They were interested, and Scott Z. Burns wrote a script. It was presented to Lucasfilm and they “loved the idea.” “They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it,” Driver said.
- Then it went to Disney’s Bob Iger and Alan Bergman. They said no because “they didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive.”
- The film was called The Hunt for Ben Solo.
So, this was a sequel film, not some sort of prequel where we learn more about Kylo Ren’s life before the events of the film or story with the underused Knights of Ren. While it’s true that his death seemed pretty permanent, this is a series where Disney let Boba Fett crawl out of a Sarlacc pit, they stapled Darth Maul back together again and the new trilogy itself suddenly brought back Emperor Palpatine despite the fact he was thrown down a bottomless pit in an exploding space station. So sure, there was probably a way to bring Ben Solo out of his “force merge” and back into reality.
It’s a frustrating situation where Lucasfilm loved an idea from an in-demand actor playing one of the only well-liked characters in the new trilogy, and Disney shot it down because they couldn’t understand how Star Wars, of all properties, could bring someone back to life, which was no doubt covered in the script itself. Add in Steven Soderbergh, director of Ocean’s 11, Traffic, The Knick and most recently, the 96%-rated spy film Black Bag, and this could have been a hit. Instead, Disney has spent more than half a decade letting its film slate languish, and its first outing back has been spun out of a TV show of waning quality.
It is not unusual for Disney to make poor Star Wars decisions, including most things that happened in Rise of Skywalker itself, but this one seems like it could have been great.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/10/21/why-disney-shot-down-adam-drivers-the-hunt-for-ben-solo-movie/
