As the news of Star Wars‘ Disney era profitability was plastered all over social media, one of the franchise’s biggest stars has shockingly confirmed that the studio rejected the chance to make a spinoff that could have made them hundreds of millions. The catalog of canceled and unrealized Star Wars projects reads like a laundry list of missed opportunities, with names as prominent as Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett missing out. Up until now, Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron was the worst miss, but now Adam Driver has revealed a new contender.
In an interview with AP for Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, Driver – who, of course, played barrel-chested nepo murderer Kylo Ren – revealed that he and Steven Soderbergh had spent two years developing a Star Wars spinoff Disney passed on. And, frustratingly, he calls it “one of the coolest (expletive) scripts I had ever been a part of.”
In logic that surely ranks alongside Sean Connery turning down Gandalf because he didn’t understand it, Disney passed because Bob Iger and Alan Bergman couldn’t get their heads around it. Mere years after “somehow, Palpatine returned,” apparently:
“We presented the script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea. They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it. We took it to Bob Iger and Alan Bergman and they said no. They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that… It was called The Hunt for Ben Solo and it was really cool. But it is no more, so I can finally talk about it.”
Sadly, that sounds like we’ll never get to see the project resurrected (barring some post-Iger miracle, of course), which is particularly a shame because Driver was clearly very keen to return as Ren. “I always was interested in doing another Star Wars. I had been talking about doing another one since 2021. Kathleen (Kennedy) had reached out. I always said: With a great director and a great story, I’d be there in a second. I loved that character and loved playing him.” Soderbergh, for his part, said: “I really enjoyed making the movie in my head. I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.”
Very much a sad case of “look what we could have won.” Inevitably, Kylo Ren fans are dismayed, with the most succinct reply summing the whole sorry situation up:
This infuriates me more than anything has in a very long time.
Disney doesn’t need any negative PR around Star Wars with a sort of new era kicking off, but the positivity that could have come from a Ren project is hard to ignore. Social media is awash with fans of the character, who will now no doubt be activated to respond en masse. And it’s hard to blame them: Kylo Ren is one of the best parts of Disney’s Star Wars lore, and getting to see more of the conflict burning inside Ben Solo that was rushed away in The Rise of Skywalker could well have fixed one of the bigger issues with the end of the trilogy.
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