Steven Soderbergh On Giving Disney Nearly Three Years Of “Free Work” For Unmade ‘Star Wars’ Sequel: “We Were All Frustrated”

Following last year’s fan campaign for the unrealized Star Wars: The Hunt for Ben Solo, Steven Soderbergh assures he’s just as frustrated about the scrapped sequel.

The Oscar-winning director noted that he “thought the next two years of my life were going to be spent making a Star Wars movie” as he opened up at a recent Q&A about Disney passing on the project, despite Lucasfilm being on board.

“It was no surprise that she was frustrated,” he told BKMag of Kathleen Kennedy’s reaction. “We were all frustrated. You know, that was two and a half years of free work for me and Adam and Rebecca Blunt. When Adam and I discussed him talking about it publicly, I said, ‘Look, do not editorialize or speculate about the why. Just say what happened, because all we know is what happened.’ The stated reason was ‘We don’t think Ben Solo could be alive.’ And that was all we were told. And so there’s nothing to do about it, you know, except move on.”

Soderbergh continued, “And as I posted, I’d kind of made the movie in my head, and just felt bad that nobody else was going to get to see it. I thought the conversation was strictly going to be a practical one—where they go, what is this going to cost? And I had a really good answer for that. But it never even got to that point. It’s insane. We’re all very disappointed.”

The son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, as well as the grandson of Anakin Skywalker, Ben (Driver) appeared in the Star Wars sequel trilogy as the villainous Kylo Ren. Although the character has a redemption arc before his death in The Rise of Skywalker (2019), Driver and Soderbergh felt Ben had unfinished business.

In her Lucasfilm exit interview, Kathleen Kennedy told Deadline that The Hunt for Ben Solo is “on the back burner,” adding of the script by Scott Burns, “It was just great. Anything’s a possibility if somebody’s willing to take a risk.”

After Driver revealed the scrapped project in October, fans didn’t take Disney’s rejection lying down, campaigning for the sequel with a plane flown above Walt Disney Studios with a banner reading “SAVE #THEHUNTFORBENSOLO.”