Back in October, Adam Driver made headlines when he revealed that he was all set to reprise the role of Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren, for a new post-The Rise of Skywalker Star Wars movie directed by Steven Soderbergh... until Disney pulled the plug.
The project was going to focus on "The Hunt for Ben Solo," even though the son of Han and Leia was pretty definitively killed off at the end of The Rise of Skywalker after first rejecting the Dark Side of the Force and helping Rey to defeat the resurrected/cloned Emperor Palpatine.
"We presented the script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea," Driver said at the time. "They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it. It was called The Hunt for Ben Solo and it was really cool. 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."
We've since learned that this project came a lot closer to entering production than we realized. Not only did The Hunt for Ben Solo have a finished script, but was fully approved by Kathleen Kennedy and greenlit internally before being cancelled by Disney executives Bob Iger and Alan Bergman.
This news has led to persistent fan-campaigns for Disney/Lucasfilm to revisit the movie, which included flying a #SaveTheHuntForBenSolo banner over Disney Studios in California.
During an interview with IGN, Driver's Star Wars sequels co-star Daisy Ridley (Rey) revealed that she had heard a few things about the project, but was very surprised when Driver publically spoke about it.
"I knew a piece of it. I heard rumblings. I have lots of friends who are crew, so things always travel like that. But, whoa! When the story came out, no, I was like, 'Oh, my God!' And it was him that said it, right? It was funny because, like, 'Oh, wow, Adam is saying it,' and that's the big surprise of the year."
As for the swell of support fans have been showing since the story broke, Ridley is all for it.
"I do love when there is a collective of positivity. The way the internet seems to have rallied to try and get it to happen. I think it's fantastic for us all. It's good for us to all be united about something in a really positive way. Obviously, everyone knows he was a very popular character, but it was also lovely to think, 'Wow, people really, really care and want this.' I just... I like it. I like when people join forces – excuse the pun – from all around the world, all different sorts of people."
"I just love that the Star Wars fandom is such a huge and gorgeous array of different points of view and different people, and the fact that everyone is really behind this thing, I think, is just sort of lovely," she added. "In a time that is so [frick]ing nuts for probably every single person on this Earth. I think it's wonderful. So I was surprised, and honestly, I felt joyful about how it went down."
It really doesn't sound like The Hunt for Ben Solo is a project (or a concept) that will ever come to fruition, but if this next era of Star Wars movies - which is said to feature Rey (Daisy Ridley) and other characters from the sequel trilogy - proves to be successful, Disney might just see the potential in taking another look at the story.