Lucasfilm co-president Dave Filoni confirmed at D23 this weekend that “The Hunt for Ben Solo,” the Kylo Ren redemption film Adam Driver and Steven Soderbergh spent two and a half years developing, is not moving forward, delivering the clearest word yet on a project that has drawn one of the most persistent fan campaigns in recent “Star Wars” history.
Asked about the film’s status, Filoni told Deadline, “It’s not here, you won’t find it here,” adding that the force is “not with us in that regard” while acknowledging the fan devotion behind it. In a separate exchange with Variety, he made a Jedi mind-trick gesture before saying, “We’re not making that picture right now, that’s all I can say” — phrasing some fans and outlets have since read as leaving room for a future revival rather than a flat denial.
Driver first disclosed the project’s existence in an October 2025 interview with the Associated Press, describing a script set after “The Rise of Skywalker” that traced Ben Solo’s path toward redemption despite his character’s death at the end of that film. Driver said Lucasfilm executives, including Kathleen Kennedy, Filoni and producer Cary Beck, backed the project, but that former CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman ultimately rejected it, unconvinced by how the story would explain Solo’s survival. Soderbergh, who wrote the script with Rebecca Blunt, has described the years spent on the film in similarly blunt terms.
The rejection sparked an unusually visible fan campaign. Organizers behind the Save Ben Solo movement have flown banner planes over Disney’s Burbank studio lot, hired a skydiver to display a message aimed at incoming CEO Josh D’Amaro, and put up Times Square billboards urging the film’s return, with mobile trucks appearing outside premieres and at San Diego Comic-Con.
Filoni’s comments came during a D23 weekend already dense with “Star Wars” news, including a new trailer for “Ahsoka” season two, premiering January 20, 2027, and the first official footage from “Star Wars: Starfighter.” Driver, meanwhile, is returning to the Disney fold in a different corner of the company, cast as the villain Mister Sinister in Marvel’s upcoming “X-Men” film.
