‘I Knew a Piece of It. I Heard Rumblings’ — Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley Reacts to Adam Driver’s The Hunt for Ben Solo Movie and the Fan Campaign Trying to Save It

There’s been a lot of chatter in the seven weeks since Adam Driver dropped a bombshell to the Associated Press that he’d spent the last few years developing The Hunt for Ben Solo. The Lucasfilm-approved but Bob Iger-nixed direct follow-up to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was confirmed by attached director Steven Soderbergh, and on multiple occasions the fanbase has hired planes to do fly-overs of the Walt Disney Studio lot in Burbank to rally support.

Up to now, one voice that hasn’t weighed in yet is actress Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey in the latest Star Wars trilogy. She’s also been in Star Wars feature development limbo since her character film was announced at Star Wars Celebration 2023. But I recently spoke to Ridley for her upcoming zombie drama, We Bury the Dead (in theaters January 2, 2026) and asked whether she knew about The Hunt for Ben Solo, which the fandom has surmised would include her character in come capacity due to Ben Solo and Rey’s dyad status.

“I knew a piece of it. I heard rumblings,” Ridley shared of her reaction to Driver’s news. “I have lots of friends who are crew, so things always travel like that. But, whoa! When the story came out, no, I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ And it was him that said it, right?”

“Him” being Driver, who is notoriously quiet about all things outside of formal press junkets. She continued, “It was funny because, like, ‘Oh, wow, Adam is saying it,’ and that’s the big surprise of the year,” she laughed.

With Star Wars fan discourse, especially about the sequels, always divisive, Ridley said witnessing the outsized reaction has been heartening.

“I do love when there is a collective of positivity,” she said about the consensus of everyone who seems to want The Hunt for Ben Solo to happen. “The way the internet seems to have rallied to try and get it to happen. I think one), it’s fantastic for us all. It’s good for us to all be united about something in a really positive way. Obviously, everyone knows he was a very popular character, but it was also lovely to think, ‘Wow, people really, really care and want this.’ I just… I like it. I like when people join forces — excuse the pun — from all around the world, all different sorts of people. I just love that the Star Wars fandom is such a huge and gorgeous array of different points of view and different people, and the fact that everyone is really behind this thing, I think, is just sort of lovely, in a time that is so f***ing nuts for probably every single person on this Earth. I think it’s wonderful. So I was surprised, and honestly, I felt joyful about how it went down.”

Asked if it’s galvanized her to push harder for her Rey film, or if she’s learned to be patient with all things Star Wars, Ridley said she has trust in everyone still developing it and that it will be “worth the wait.”

“Honestly, there are scripts that I read five years ago, and now I’ve gone, ‘Oh, maybe they will actually happen,’” she said of many non-Star Wars projects she’s been attached to, including We Bury the Dead. “I think over the years, I’ve learned how the reality of getting any film made is so massive. The hurdles are vast… But with this particularly, I know that incredible voices and creatives are part of it, and I know the wait will be worth it.”

In the short term, Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian & Grogu movie comes out May 2026, then Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter releases May 2027. TV show wise, Ahsoka Season 2 is in development but without a release date.

Ridley’s Rey film, assuming it actually gets made, takes place roughly 15 years after the events of The Rise of Skywalker as she looks to rebuild the Jedi Order.

Photo by Dave J Hogan/Getty Images.

Tara Bennett is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering film and television. She has over 20 years of experience covering the film and television industries with bylines at SFX Magazine, Paste Magazine, and SYFY WIRE. She is a New York Times bestselling author of more than 30 official movie and TV companion books including The Art of Avatar: The Way of Water and The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Find @TaraDBennett on Twitter.