After seven years, there is finally a new Star Wars movie coming to theaters this year. In the interim since The Rise of Skywalker, a slew of potential Star Wars films were announced and then either abandoned or left to wither away in development hell — like Rian Johnson’s trilogy, or the movie from the Game of Thrones guys, or Kevin Feige’s Star Wars, or Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron, and on and on.
And those are just the movies we know about. Who knows how many films were quietly considered and kept hush-hush? We recently learned about one such project when Adam Driver revealed he had spent years working in secret with director Steven Soderbergh on a new movie featuring his Sequel Trilogy villain, Kylo Ren (AKA Ben Solo).
Asked about the project recently by BKMag, Steven Soderbergh himself called the project “two and a half years of free work for me and Adam and [writer] Rebecca Blunt.”
He added…
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.
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Soderbergh also revealed that Disney never even asked him “What is this going to cost?”
“It never even got to that point,” he added. “It’s insane. We’re all very disappointed.”
As a film nerd and Soderbergh fan going back decades, it’s quite insane to me that Disney would reject his idea. But I recognize that while he has some big hits (the Ocean’s movies, Magic Mike), his tastes sometimes drift into weirder territory than Disney might want from a Star Wars movie.
But this thing also had Adam Driver on board, and his Kylo Ren was surely the most popular part of the Sequel Trilogy. To throw away the chance to make another Star Wars with him … that does kind of blow my mind.
The next Star Wars movie that Disney did not reject, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is scheduled to premiere in theaters on May 22.
