Adam Driver Confirms He Is Done Playing Kylo Ren
The standalone Kylo Ren film, developed with Steven Soderbergh, didn’t make it past Disney’s top executives.
Summary
Adam Driver says he will not return as Kylo Ren, closing the door on the shelved standalone film 'The Hunt for Ben Solo'
Driver and Steven Soderbergh spent several years developing the project before Disney’s top executives turned it down
Fans campaigned to save the film with billboards and a banner flown over Walt Disney Studios in Burbank
Adam Driver has ruled out playing Kylo Ren again, saying The Hunt for Ben Solo, the standalone Star Wars film he developed with Steven Soderbergh, is no longer in play. Asked on a recent episode of The Rich Eisen Show whether he could see himself returning as the character, Driver said, “Yeah, it’s over… No more ‘Star Wars.’”
The project began as a long-term collaboration between Driver and Soderbergh, who was attached to direct. Over several years, the pair worked on a screenplay together with writers Scott Burns and Rebecca Blunt, building a story around Ben Solo as the lead of his own film. Driver told Eisen the group put serious effort into the script and that he thought the result was strong.
Lucasfilm was on board at first. Driver has previously said the studio responded well to the pitch and understood the angle the team was taking. The project stalled once it reached Disney’s top leadership, when CEO Bob Iger and Alan Bergman declined to move forward because they could not see how Ben Solo, who dies at the end of the sequel trilogy, could plausibly be alive. Driver summed up the decision to Eisen by saying the executives told him the character was dead.
Once the news became public, fans responded on a large scale. Supporters paid for billboards and hired a plane to fly a “Save The Hunt for Ben Solo” banner over Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. Driver said he was surprised and moved by the scale of the response, especially the billboards and the plane over Disney’s lot.
None of that changed the outcome. Soderbergh signaled in April that the film would already have happened if it were going to, and Driver’s latest comments go further. Pressed by Eisen on whether he would come back if someone revived the project, Driver said that would be up to the studio, not to him or Soderbergh, before adding, “I think the ship has sailed though.”
