Disney refused a Kylo Ren film, despite the super director being there

According to Adam Driver, the Kylo Ren actor had planned a new Star Wars on his character, well advanced in the writing, but who we will never see…

There are films that bring people together, even for the wrong reasons. Star Wars 9 : L’Ascension de Skywalker has united almost the entire galaxy against him, and yet we always come back to it. Even recently, Forbes revealed the true, absolutely mind-blowing budget of this horrible filmand it seems that Lucasfilm persists in wanting to offer Daisy Ridley a new feature film around Rey, after the events of the postlogy.

We will at least recognize this one for having inducted exciting actors, starting with Adam Driver, who took advantage of the popularity acquired by Kylo Ren to film with a host of great authors (Leos Carax, Martin Scorsese, Noah Baumbach, Spike Lee and Francis Ford Coppola). During the promotion of Father, Mother, Sister, Brother by Jim Jarmusch, the actor revealed to the Associated Press that, for a time, he could have returned in the shoes of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo… before the project was nipped in the bud by Disney.

The return of Ren?

Among the accomplished directors on Adam Driver’s list is Steven Soderbergh, the mercenary experimentalist with whom he filmed Logan Lucky. It was the actor who approached the filmmaker with a concept around Kylo Ren and his return, in a film which would have taken place after L’Ascension de Skywalkerdespite the character’s supposed death at the end of the film.

“I was always interested in the idea of ​​doing another Star Wars. I had been talking about it since 2021. Kathleen (Kennedy) contacted me again. I’ve always said that with a good director and a good story, I’ll be there in a second. I loved this character and playing him.

We presented our script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea. They understood our angle and why we wanted to do it. After that, we took it to Bob Iger (CEO of Disney) and Alan Bergman (co-president of Disney Studios Content) and they said no. They couldn’t see how to explain that Ben Solo was still alive, and that was it. It was called The Hunt for Ben Solo and it was very cool. But it’s no longer relevant, so I can finally talk about it. »

If the question of the forced return of a dead character can leave one doubtful, we can also understand that Adam Driver wanted to offer Ben Solo a more satisfying ending than that given by L’Ascension de Skywalker. The one who should have had the opposite trajectory of Darth Vader finally returned to the ranks with an easy redemption, which would at least have had the merit of being explored in greater depth.

And we must recognize that, on paper, the association of talents allowed by Adam Driver was a bit of a dream. Basically, Steven Soderbergh teamed up with his wife Rebecca Blunt (already screenwriter of Logan Lucky) to imagine a plot. Lucasfilm’s enthusiastic reactions to this pitch led them to hire Scott Z. Burns (writer of Vengeance in the skinbut also The Informant !, Contagion, Side effects et The Laundromat by Soderbergh, and finally director of The Report with Adam Driver) to write the screenplay.

Steven Soderbergh agreed to comment on Driver’s remarks toAssociated Press : “I really loved making this movie in my head. I’m sorry the fans can’t see it.”.

Soderbergh is best known for his taste for improvisation, for his technical experiments with digital technology, and for his way of approaching each project as a prototype more or less on the margins of Hollywood’s usual production methods. And according to Adam Driver, this was also taken into account in his possible arrival on the saga Star Wars :

“We wanted to be smart about how we spent the money, and do it for less than most (blockbusters), while still keeping the same mindset as other Star Wars films, which is something that’s hand-crafted and driven by the characters. The Empire Strikes Back is, in my opinion, the standard for this type of film. And (Steven Soderbergh) is, for me, one of the best directors of all time. He lives with his code of honor, his ethics, without compromise. »

We can always console ourselves with the next film Star Wars to go to the cinema, namely The Mandalorian and Groguin theaters May 20, 2026.