Soderbegh Won’t Pursue “Star Wars” Idea

While he may be disappointed that it didn’t happen, don’t expect filmmaker Steven Soderbergh to keep pursuing his rejected “The Hunt for Ben Solo” film.

As previously reported, Soderbergh, actor Adam Driver and writer Rebecca Blunt teamed up to develop a film that would’ve taken place after the events of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and follow Driver’s Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. The trio spent around two and a half years doing some work on it.

However, it was revealed last year that Disney’s top brass (namely Bob Iger and Alan Bergman) rejected it despite everyone at Lucasfilm (including Kathleen Kennedy) being pleased with the project.

Since the cancelled movie was revealed, fans have been rallying to convince the studio to reconsider moving forward with the project, but there’s been no movement even as Disney and Lucasfilm have seen executive regime changes.

Now, speaking with The Playlist this week while out promoting “The Christophers,” Soderbergh was asked if he was interested in pursuing the project any further, to which he replied a simple “nope.” He also revealed that Driver was the driving force behind the project:

“Adam and I started talking, and this would have been almost three years ago now. It was strictly Adam saying, ‘I think there’s still somewhere to go with this character.’ That’s how it started. Otherwise, I never in a million years would have found myself in that universe again.

I don’t regret one minute of the time we spent working on that. I felt the work was good. It’s just good for you to be in that room and working on it. It’s like CrossFit—it’s good for you. It’ll have a residual effect that will be unexpected at some point.

As soon as it became apparent, OK, not gonna happen, I sat down and started writing [something else]. It’s like, ‘OK, new scenario, let’s get cracking.’ At a certain point, it’s like complaining about the weather. You just gotta keep moving… Look, if it was gonna happen, it would have happened. It’s that simple.”

Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” opens in cinemas this Friday.