{"id":531603,"date":"2025-10-27T18:12:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T18:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/531603\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T18:12:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T18:12:14","slug":"steven-soderbergh-says-kathleen-kennedy-told-him-disney-had-never-turned-down-a-completed-lucasfilm-script-before-star-wars-the-hunt-for-ben-solo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/531603\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Soderbergh Says Kathleen Kennedy Told Him Disney Had Never Turned Down a Completed Lucasfilm Script Before Star Wars: The Hunt for Ben Solo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The discovery of the unrealized The Hunt For Ben Solo<\/a> film has really shaken up Star Wars<\/a> fans over the last week \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 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,\u201d Soderbergh recently wrote<\/a> on his BlueSky account. \u201cShe said no, this was a first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Days prior, the filmmaker posted on the platform<\/a> to note that he was not happy about having to keep the project under wraps for so long, even though it didn\u2019t come to pass anyway. \u201cFor the record, I did not enjoy lying about the existence of \u2018THE HUNT FOR BEN SOLO,\u2019 but it really did need to remain a secret\u2026until now!\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time Soderbergh has opened up on his feelings about the film and its dissolution. \u201cI really enjoyed making the movie in my head,\u201d he told Associated Press<\/a> in a statement just one week ago. \u201cI\u2019m just sorry the fans won\u2019t get to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a> on Friday, October 24 and had it fly over Disney Studios in Burbank with a tail banner<\/a> that read, \u201cSave \u2018The Hunt For Ben Solo.\u2019\u201d The anger from fans over this move has sparked an outcry in the form of a Change.org petition<\/a> as well, which has over 3,700 signatures at the time of writing. <\/p>\n

The project would have taken place following The Rise of Skywalker<\/a> and centered on Adam Driver\u2019s character Kylo Ren, who is actually Ben Solo, and his quest for redemption. Driver recently told AP that The Hunt For Ben Solo was \u201cone of the coolest f\u2014king scripts I had ever been a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every Upcoming Star Wars Movie and TV Show\"From<\/p>\n

Driver played Ben Solo \/ Kylo Ren in each of the three films in Lucasfilm\u2019s Sequel Trilogy, with his final appearance in 2019\u2019s divisive The Rise of Skywalker. \u201cI always was interested in doing another Star Wars,\u201d Driver said. He revealed he had been in talks about another Star Wars movie since 2021, and that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy had \u201creached out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI always said: with a great director and a great story, I\u2019d be there in a second,\u201d Driver commented. \u201cI loved that character and loved playing him.”<\/p>\n

Driver said Lucasfilm \u201cloved the idea\u201d and \u201ctotally understood our angle and why we were doing it.\u201d However, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney co-chairman Alan Bergman said no. “They didn\u2019t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that,\u201d he said. Soderbergh told AP: \u201cI really enjoyed making the movie in my head. I\u2019m just sorry the fans won\u2019t get to see it.\u201d Disney and Lucasfilm declined to comment to the AP.<\/p>\n

Driver was described as feeling mystified by the decision, insisting the plan was to \u201cbe 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.\u201d He pointed to the much-loved Empire Strikes Back as being \u201cthe standard of what those movies were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The discovery of the unrealized The Hunt For Ben Solo film has really shaken up Star Wars fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-531603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115447486589729079","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}