We have to assume that Adam Driver knew, from pretty much the exact moment that he revealed (about a year ago) that Disney had killed his plans to make a new Star Wars movie with Steven Soderbergh, that he’d be getting asked about it for the foreseeable future. He certainly seems to be okay with it, after all: Although Driver recently made statements that he’s officially given up on the dream of The Hunt For Ben Solo—the movie that he and Soderbergh had charted out, reviving his Kylo Ren character from the sequel trilogy—ever getting made, he still sounds genuinely pissed when the film is brought up. “It’s criminal,” he said this week of the movie’s axing. “Or it felt criminal. We’re all moving on.”
Driver makes it clear that his stance on this topic stems almost entirely from his love of Soderbergh, who he spent two years developing the film with. (He previously worked with the director for 2017 heist movie Logan Lucky; Soderbergh also produced Driver’s 2019 film The Report.) “For me it was: Steven Soderbergh wants to make a Star Wars film,” Driver said in a recent Associated Press interview, allegedly about promoting his new film Paper Tiger. “What are we debating?”
The Hunt For Ben Solo was famously axed at the top level at Disney, after since-departed Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy gave the film a tentative green light. Former Mouse CEO Bob Iger wasn’t biting, though, reportedly saying that he didn’t think audiences would buy the idea of Driver’s character coming back to life. (It’s like he didn’t even care that Ben and Rey are part of a Force Dyad! Or that this is a franchise about magical clone space wizards, for that matter.)
But while Driver is not shy about expressing his frustration that film executives don’t seem to want to see interesting directors make cool things—something he also expressed about James Gray’s Paper Tiger, for that matter, calling difficulties in selling the movie “absurd to me”—he wants to make it clear that neither he, nor Soderbergh, are sweating it. “Steven already has something else that’s one of the best things he’s ever written,” Driver asserts, before reflecting on his own happiness at the reception the idea got, which included fan campaigns and plane banners being flown over Disney headquarters. “I was blown away by the response to it. In no way did I think there would be billboards in Times Square. It’s so moving. It did feel like we were all at the bar having a conversation about the films we wanted to see.”
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