Steven Soderbergh says getting his completed Star Wars script rejected was a "first" for Disney

Talking about The Hunt For Ben Solo, Soderbergh said it was the first time Disney had ever rejected a completed Star Wars script that already had Lucasfilm's approval.

By William Hughes | October 25, 2025 | 3:14pm

Steven Soderbergh, Photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

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Steven Soderbergh says getting his completed Star Wars script rejected was a

Firsts! Everybody loves ’em. They’re attention-grabbing, headline-setting, boundary breaking. Sure, the trailing rabble might wish some sort of fictitious disease upon you for scoring one, but, deep down, everybody wants to be first! Unless you’re Steven Soderbergh, and the “first” you’re getting is writing the first fully completed Star Wars script to ever be submitted by Lucasfilm to its corporate masters at Disney, only for the Mouse People to reject the thing outright.

Soderbergh was, of course, talking about The Hunt For Ben Solo, the secret Star Wars project that he apparently spent a decent chunk of time working on with franchise star Adam Driver, only to have Bob Iger and other executives at Disney give it an unequivocal “nah.” Driver revealed the existence of the project earlier this week, calling it “one of the coolest fucking scripts I had ever been a part of.” Soderbergh gave a brief statement when the news broke, saying he “really enjoyed making the movie in my head. I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.” A few days later, though, he went into slightly more detail, tapping his rarely-used social media accounts to note that, “For the record, I did not enjoy lying about the existence of THE HUNT FOR BEN SOLO, but it really did need to remain a secret…until now!”

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More interestingly, Soderbergh relayed the above factoid, regarding the non-film’s rare place in Star Wars history: “Also, in the aftermath of the HFBS situation, I asked Kathy Kennedy if LFL had ever turned in a finished movie script for greenlight to Disney and had it rejected. She said no, this was a first.” Which is, of course, part of what’s been so interesting about the Hunt For Ben Solo situation, which has kicked up a healthy dose of fan interest and ire, including demands for the film to be made. It’s not like Lucasfilm itself hasn’t been picky, or even nit-picky, about the creative process of its latter-day Star Wars films. (The situation surrounding Solo, where directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller got booted off the project late into filming, comes immediately to mind, as does the shuffling of directors that saw Colin Trevorrow get moved off Episode IX and J.J. Abrams brought back in to finish out the sequel trilogy.)

But by both Driver and Soderbergh’s accounts, Lucas folks like Kathleen Kennedy were into their script, throwing full support behind it. It was the Disney brass that then disagreed with their Star Wars experts about whether the movie would work—ostensibly because they didn’t understand how Driver’s character could still be alive to be hunted for—and killed the thing. It speaks, to our minds, to a growing conservative-mindedness that’s grown up around Disney’s approach to Star Wars in the six empty years since The Rise Of Skywalker—a fear of risk that’s manifested most especially in next year’s The Mandalorian And Grogu, which couldn’t sound like it’s playing the franchise’s most recent hits harder if it tried.

Anyway: Soderbergh’s sorry he had to lie about the existence of his cool-sounding, bad-record-setting, very dead Star Wars movie.

[via Deadline]