“This had been the first time”

About a week ago we learned that we cannot have nice things. After Rian Johnson signed the best ‘Star Wars’ movie released to date —don’t @ me—, Adam Driver dropped the bomb: we could have had another installment of the galactic saga signed by an author in capital letters centered on Kylo Ren, and its script is “one of the most fucking great I’ve ever been involved in.”

We can’t have nice things

The filmmaker in question who would have been in charge of leading ‘The Hunt for Ben Solo’ is none other than Steven Soderberghwho outlined the script with his collaborators Rebecca Blunt and Scott Z. Burns, with whom he worked on ‘Logan’s Luck’ and ‘Contagion’ respectively. Now, after Driver revealed the melon, the director has explained in BlueSky what happened to the project.

Basically, and here’s the kicker, ‘The Hunt for Ben Solo’ became the first completed, approval-ready script submitted by Lucasfilm and unceremoniously rejected by the Disney factory. Surely the problem is that the reading implied that it was a full-length feature film and not something to watch in the background while you’re on the couch with your cell phone—forgive me for being rude.

“For the record, I did not enjoy lying about the existence of THE HUNT FOR BEN SOLObut it had to remain a secret… until now! Furthermore, after the matter of HFBSI asked Kathy Kennedy if Lucasfilm had ever submitted a finished movie script to Disney for approval and had it rejected. “She said no, this was the first time.”

During a conversation with the Associated Press, Driver gave more details about the cancellation process of a title whose resurrection is already being claimed by the fandom with aerial banners included.

“We pitched the script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea. They totally understood our approach and why we were doing it. We took it to Bob Iger and Alan Bergman and they said no. They couldn’t see how Ben Solo could still be alive. And that was it. But he’s no longer around, so I can finally talk about it.”

We won’t have Steven Soderbergh doing his thing in ‘The Hunt for Ben Solo’, but we will have a ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ movie. I guess it’s easier to sell baby Yodas merch than hairy sith merch.

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