Late last month, news broke about a movie featuring Ben Solo. Adam Driver revealed that Steven Soderbergh and he pitched Lucasfilm on the film, The Hunt for Ben Solo. But Disney decided not to move forward with the project, even though it had a complete script. This seems like a poor decision for several reasons, including the Driver and Soderbergh combination.
Should A Ben Solo Movie Been Made?
At first glance, we may not find a Ben Solo movie to be that promising. But if we look at what Disney has done and the premise of the film, it could have worked quite well.
Some fans found the decision not to make the movie ironic in that Disney “couldn’t see how Ben Solo is still alive”, but “brought back Palpatine out of nowhere without explanation.” Another post adds to this rationale by indicating how it makes even less sense given that Disney has resurrected both Boba Fett and Darth Maul.
Disney has moved forward with characters that have seemingly perished. Beyond the baffling return of the Emperor, we could claim that the return of Boba was rather outlandish too. While we may view Boba’s demise in Return of the Jedi as “silly,” we may also think his survival in the Sarlacc pit falls into that category.
The return of Maul is another case in point. Although a beloved character, it seems that he has died at least two times. The upcoming series Maul – Shadow Lord will investigate his criminal empire building during the Clone Wars, but the project still represents a resurrection of a character.
Adam Driver commented on how he believed the project had “one of the coolest [expletive] scripts I had ever been a part of.” That comment coincides with a promising aspect of this movie–its writer, Scott Z. Burns, “a regular Soderbergh collaborator” responsible for writing The Informant!, Contagion, and Side Effects.
Based on the idea that Ben’s return was quite feasible and the collective creative talent behind the movie, we have strong grounds for a greenlit project.
The Promise of the Movie
We can recall that Soderbergh is an Academy Award-winning director, whose work includes Traffic and Contagion. As this video about the squashed project states, we can credit this director with “one great movie a year for your entire lifetime.” Paired with Burns, as noted above, we have good grounds to expect great things.
Then, we add Adam Driver into the mix, who, by most accounts, did solid performances of Kylo Ren across the sequels. As we can sample in this Reddit forum, Driver garners plenty of fan support for his solid performances. Some went so far as to say that Driver as Kylo was “some of the best acting in Star Wars as a whole.”
Given this momentum, the project appeared at least as promising as a Mando & Grogu summer rendition. And, Lucasfilm approved the project, only to have Disney block the submitted script from being produced. This was actually the first time that had occurred, as Kathleen Kennedy expressed to Soderbergh (see above SYFY article).
This video here recaps how executives Bob Iger and Alan Bergman made that decision, which in turn prompted a fan campaign to save The Hunt for Ben Solo. That fans took to the air and banners reflects another dimension of promise for a film not made.
Nevertheless, we are left with what Soderbergh commented, a movie in his head that fans “won’t get to see”.
The Promise and Downfall
We are left with promising potential for The Hunt for Ben Solo and the reality of this project’s downfall. If only executives had seen this return along the lines of at least three other times characters reappeared. Likewise, the talent momentum provided a solid basis for this movie.