This caught my attention because Steven Soderbergh doing Star Wars is the kind of creative swing Disney rarely lets happen. According to multiple reports, “The Hunt for Ben Solo” was a secret, fully scripted film pitched by Soderbergh, written with Scott Z. Burns and Rebecca Blunt, and built around Adam Driver returning as Ben Solo-alive after The Rise of Skywalker. Lucasfilm allegedly loved it. Disney leadership did not. And just like that, the most intriguing post-sequel idea in years was dead.
The pitch: Ben Solo survives Exegol, goes on a redemption-and-survival arc, and Star Wars finally commits to a post-episode IX story that isn’t just lore wallpaper. Soderbergh-whose best work (Traffic, Contagion, Ocean’s Eleven) blends momentum with meticulous craft—could’ve delivered the franchise’s first true thriller-procedural in a galaxy far, far away. Pair that with Burns’ knack for grounded stakes and you start to see the shape of it: a chase, a hunt, a character study about consequence instead of destiny.
Adam Driver has said he’d return for a “great director and a great story.” Apparently, Kathleen Kennedy approached him in 2021 with exactly that. Reportedly, Disney CEO Bob Iger and film chief Alan Bergman nixed it, believing there was no way to justify Ben’s survival. That stance is… curious. Star Wars has revived Darth Maul and even Emperor Palpatine. If resurrection is fine for a Sith and a clone-riddled emperor, why not a Skywalker trying to atone?
From a brand-safety perspective, letting Ben live reopens the sequel trilogy’s wounds. It undercuts the finality of his sacrifice and risks reigniting the Reylo discourse that scorched Twitter for years. It also complicates future films—like the New Jedi Order project with Daisy Ridley—by reshaping the post-IX map overnight.
There’s also the instability factor. In the past five years, Disney/Lucasfilm has iced more Star Wars movies than it’s shipped: Rogue Squadron shelved, the Benioff & Weiss project gone, the Kevin Feige movie evaporated, Damon Lindelof’s iteration replaced. Meanwhile, Andor proved a mature, auteur-driven approach can work—just not in cinemas yet. If Soderbergh’s film existed on paper, it was a big swing at the exact moment Disney has been defaulting to risk management.
As someone who bounces between games and sci-fi cinema, Soderbergh’s pitch reads like the Star Wars equivalent of a prestige single-player campaign: tight focus, character-first, rules you can feel. Think Andor’s grounded tension with the propulsion of a heist or manhunt. That’s the tone shift the franchise needs more than another “galaxy-ending superweapon.” A Ben Solo redemption journey could finally interrogate the fallout of violence the way games like The Last of Us or Spec Ops: The Line force you to sit with it.
Canon-wise, letting Ben live is messy but not fatal. Star Wars has always been pulp. Stakes are less about biology and more about meaning. If the story is about atonement, survival, and the cost of choosing the light too late, there’s juice there—especially with Driver, arguably the sequels’ MVP. The bigger worry isn’t canon; it’s whether Disney would really let Soderbergh be Soderbergh, or sand the edges down until the movie feels like just another commodity tie-in.
The “Save The Hunt for Ben Solo” push echoes #ReleaseTheSnyderCut—airplane banner over Disney’s Burbank lot, a Broadway billboard that read: “For Adam. Nobody’s ever really gone. Hope lives. Ben is alive! #THBS.” Faithful to Luke’s line, sure, but also a pointed reminder that fandoms know how to pressure corporate gatekeepers in public now.
Will it work? History is mixed. Snyder fans got their cut. The Ayer Cut didn’t happen. Batgirl stayed canceled. Star Wars tends to respond with quiet pivots, not public reversals. Right now, Disney’s silent—and silence usually means the answer is “no,” at least for now.
If true, the bigger story isn’t just a canceled film—it’s that Lucasfilm continues to incubate bold ideas only to watch the parent company flinch. That has downstream effects. It narrows the timeline canvas for future projects, including games. A living Ben Solo would ripple into novels, comics, and any post-IX interactive projects. Keeping him dead keeps the board simpler—but also safer, flatter, and frankly less interesting.
Meanwhile, the most compelling Star Wars storytelling of the Disney era—Andor’s systemic rebellion, Jedi: Survivor’s bruised optimism, the promise of Ubisoft’s Outlaws—succeeds by committing to strong creative POVs. A Soderbergh-led “hunt” could have joined that club. Instead, we’ve got another entry in the growing ledger of what-could-have-beens.
Reports say Steven Soderbergh had a finished Star Wars script centered on a surviving Ben Solo with Adam Driver ready to return. Lucasfilm liked it; Disney allegedly killed it. Fans are campaigning, but the real takeaway is the same old pattern: bold Star Wars ideas keep dying at the corporate checkpoint.
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