Adam Driver really wanted to play his Star Wars character Kylo Ren again—and even got Lucasfilm on board for a sequel to 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker to make it happen.
But it didn’t pan out, as Driver told the Associated Press Tuesday, even though he had even found a director for the film in Oscar-winning Black Bag auteur Steven Soderbergh.
The Hunt for Ben Solo, as it was tentatively called, was “one of the coolest f—ing scripts I had ever been a part of,” Driver told the outlet. “It is no more, so I can finally talk about it.”
Driver played Kylo Ren/Ben Solo in all three of the Star Wars sequel trilogy films. “I loved that character and loved playing him,” Driver explained. “I always was interested in doing another Star Wars. I had been talking about doing another one since 2021.”
Driver said that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy “reached out,” and he “always said: With a great director and a great story, I’d be there in a second.” When The Hunt for Ben Solo story came along, Driver said it seemed like a slam dunk.
Soderbergh created the story with Rebecca Blunt, which just happens to be the pseudonym Soderbergh’s wife, former E! personality Jules Asner, used when she wrote the script for Lucky Logan. The two tapped Contagion writer Scott Z. Burns to pen the script, which Driver called “really cool.”
Lucasfilm “loved the idea,” Driver said, and “totally understood our angle and why we were doing it.” Disney, however, couldn’t get on board.
“We took it to [Disney CEO] Bob Iger” and co-chair Alan Bergman, Driver recalled. “They said no.”
As Driver’s character dies at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, the sequel stumped the company’s top brass. “They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that,” the two-time Oscar nominee explained.
Driver shared that he and Soderbergh seemed to have all the ingredients for a great addition to the Star Wars universe. “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,” he said, “which is handmade and character-driven.”
Soderbergh also expressed regret that the project didn’t come to fruition in a statement to AP. “I really enjoyed making the movie in my head,” he wrote. “I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.”
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