The discovery of the unrealized The Hunt For Ben Solo film has really shaken up Star Wars fans over the last week — and recently, Steven Soderbergh, the brains behind the project, revealed that the decision not to greenlight the completed Lucasfilm script for the film was a first for Disney.
“In the aftermath of the HFBS situation, I asked Kathy Kennedy if [Lucasfilm Ltd] had ever turned in a finished movie script for greenlight to Disney and had it rejected,” Soderbergh recently wrote on his BlueSky account. “She said no, this was a first.”
Days prior, the filmmaker posted on the platform to note that he was not happy about having to keep the project under wraps for so long, even though it didn’t come to pass anyway. “For the record, I did not enjoy lying about the existence of ‘THE HUNT FOR BEN SOLO,’ but it really did need to remain a secret…until now!” he wrote.
This isn’t the first time Soderbergh has opened up on his feelings about the film and its dissolution. “I really enjoyed making the movie in my head,” he told Associated Press in a statement just one week ago. “I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.”
Fans are dying to see the project, even though it is considered dead by Lucasfilm Ltd, the company who develops and produces Star Wars media. In fact, a group of fans chartered a plane on Friday, October 24 and had it fly over Disney Studios in Burbank with a tail banner that read, “Save ‘The Hunt For Ben Solo.’” The anger from fans over this move has sparked an outcry in the form of a Change.org petition as well, which has over 3,700 signatures at the time of writing.
The project would have taken place following The Rise of Skywalker and centered on Adam Driver’s character Kylo Ren, who is actually Ben Solo, and his quest for redemption. Driver recently told AP that The Hunt For Ben Solo was “one of the coolest f—king scripts I had ever been a part of.”
Driver played Ben Solo / Kylo Ren in each of the three films in Lucasfilm’s Sequel Trilogy, with his final appearance in 2019’s divisive The Rise of Skywalker. “I always was interested in doing another Star Wars,” Driver said. He revealed he had been in talks about another Star Wars movie since 2021, and that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy had “reached out.”
“I always said: with a great director and a great story, I’d be there in a second,” Driver commented. “I loved that character and loved playing him.”
Driver said Lucasfilm “loved the idea” and “totally understood our angle and why we were doing it.” However, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney co-chairman Alan Bergman said no. “They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that,” he said. Soderbergh told AP: “I really enjoyed making the movie in my head. I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.” Disney and Lucasfilm declined to comment to the AP.
Driver was described as feeling mystified by the decision, insisting the plan was to “be judicial about how to spend money and be economical with it, and do it for less than most but in the same spirit of what those movies are, which is handmade and character-driven.” He pointed to the much-loved Empire Strikes Back as being “the standard of what those movies were.”
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
