Disney Rejects ‘Star Wars’ Movie Featuring Major Returning Actor

The most exciting Star Wars project in years was cancelled before we even knew about it.

Adam Driver, who played Kylo Ren a.k.a. Ben Solo in the most recent Star Wars trilogy, revealed in a new interview with the Associated Press last Monday that he spent two years working with Ocean’s Eleven director Steven Soderbergh on a sequel called The Hunt for Ben Solo.

“I always was interested in doing another Star Wars… 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,” Driver said.

It seems he locked down the “great director” part, given Soderbergh’s 14 Oscar nominations and general status as one of the coolest directors working. The two worked with Rebecca Blunt and Scott Z. Burns to write “one of the coolest (expletive) scripts I had ever been a part of,” Driver said. But Disney didn’t care for the idea, since Ben Solo died in the ninth Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker.

“We took it to [Disney executives] Bob Iger and Alan Bergman and they said no. They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that,” recalled the Oscar nominee. “It was called The Hunt for Ben Solo and it was really cool. But it is no more, so I can finally talk about it.”

In a statement, Soderbergh said, “I really enjoyed making the movie in my head. I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.”

It’s a confounding decision by Disney for a franchise that desperately needs new life, and it’s hard to think there’d be many actor-director combos better than Driver and Soderbergh, who already worked together on the critically acclaimed heist flick Logan Lucky in 2017.

“We wanted 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,” Driver said. “Empire Strikes Back being, in my opinion, the standard of what those movies were. But he is, to me, one of my favorite directors of all time. He lives his code, lives his ethics, doesn’t compromise.”