Hope always springs eternal for “Star Wars” fans, especially the kind who treat executive shakeups like hidden canon clues. When Kathleen Kennedy stepped down as Lucasfilm president in January and Dave Filoni moved into studio leadership alongside Lynwen Brennan, it was easy to imagine a fresh lane opening up for old ideas that had died under the last regime. And when Josh D’Amaro officially succeeded Bob Iger as Disney CEO on March 18, that fantasy only got louder. However, in a wider The Playlist interview about his upcoming film “The Christophers,” Steven Soderbergh made clear he is not interested in reopening the door on his abandoned “Star Wars: The Hunt For Ben Solo” project with Adam Driver, no matter who is now running Lucasfilm or Disney.
His answer was brutally short: “Nope.”
That came after Soderbergh was asked whether Tony Gilroy’s “Andor” had anything to do with whatever energy once existed around the ‘Ben Solo’ idea. He said it did not — but only because the conversations with Driver had started well before the series ever aired.
“Well, I don’t want to say [it had no influence], because then it makes it seem like, you know, ‘I watched “Andor,” and it had absolutely no impact on me,’ which is not true, it was great,” he explained. “But this was [all] before ‘Andor’ aired. Adam and I started talking, and this would have been almost three years ago now.”
The idea, he explained, did not come from him looking to jump back into the “Star Wars” universe at all. It came explicitly from Driver.
“It was strictly Adam saying, ‘I think there’s still somewhere to go with this character.’ That’s how it started. Otherwise, I never in a million years would have found myself in that universe again,” he admitted.
Even with the project no longer moving forward, Soderbergh spoke about the process as time well spent.
“I don’t regret one minute of the time we spent working on that,” he said. “I felt the work was good. It’s just good for you to be in that room and working on it. It’s like CrossFit—it’s good for you. It’ll have a residual effect that will be unexpected at some point.”
Once it became clear the project was not going to happen, he did not linger on it.
“As soon as it became apparent, OK, not gonna happen, I sat down and started writing [something else],” Soderbergh said. “It’s like, ‘OK, new scenario, let’s get cracking.’ At a certain point, it’s like complaining about the weather. You just gotta keep moving.”
For now, Soderbergh has a pile of scripts on his desk, and fanboys should probably put that dream to bed.
“Look, if it was gonna happen, it would have happened,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
More from The Playlist’s conversation with Soderbergh about “The Christophers,” which opens April 10 via Neon, this week.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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