By George & Josh Bate
More details about The Hunt for Ben Solo have rubbed salt into a very open wound for many passionate Star Wars fans.
As reported by The Playlist, The Hunt for Ben Solo was further along in development than fans initially thought. Sources close to the project affirmed that the film was not a loose concept or early pitch. There was a finalized script, proposed start date, final budget, and procedures to begin prep and staffing stages. Disney had already purchased a completed treatment by Steven Soderbergh and Rebecca Blunt (the pseudonym for Soderbergh’s wife Jules Asner).
Additionally, it’s been revealed that Lucasfilm paid Scott Z. Burns more than any other screenwriter in the company’s history to write the script for The Hunt for Ben Solo, a particularly astonishing feat given the film never came to fruition. Burns is known for penning the scripts for Side Effects, Contagion, and The Bourne Ultimatum. He also did uncredited script work on Rogue One and is currently writing the script for the remake of American Psycho.
So how did The Hunt for Ben Solo go belly up? Well, The Playlist reports that Kathleen Kennedy and the Lucasfilm Story Group wanted to have the film “ready to shoot” before presenting it to Disney. After being submitted to Alan Bergman and Bob Iger, however, the project stalled. Their purported primary concern was regarding how Ben Solo could have lived given the character’s death at the end of The Rise of Skywalker. Sources close to the film note though that the real reason to halt the project was “politically motivated” and coincided with Bob Iger’s succession plan at Disney.
Steven Soderbergh himself chimed in on BlueSky to confirm that this was the first time in Lucasfilm history that a fully developed project was presented to Disney to be greenlit, only to be then rejected at the last hurdle. “For the record, I did not enjoy lying about the existence of The Hunt for Ben Solo,” Soderbergh remarked. “But it really did need to remain a secret….until now!”
The Playlist speculates that Soderbergh and Driver can finally talk about the project as the NDAs have lapsed and the project is truly dead. That won’t stop Star Wars fans from having their voices heard, as evidenced by a group of passionate fans who paid to have a plane fly over Disney Studios with a banner saying “Save The Hunt for Ben Solo.”
Regarding the plot of the film, The Playlist confirms that The Hunt for Ben Solo would have indeed revived Ben Solo (duh). The report remarks that Ben’s “whereabouts become the central mystery” of the story and that it is unclear if Rey Skywalker and other established characters would have been in the film.
For now, The Hunt for Ben Solo appears to be dead, but anything is possible in Star Wars. The Clone Wars was cancelled and then revived years later, for instance. And, as Luke Skywalker once said, “No one’s ever really gone.”