Steven Soderbergh is not a man who minces words, and his account of what happened to The Hunt for Ben Solo is one of the more striking pieces of Hollywood candor you'll hear from a filmmaker of his stature.
"It's insane," Soderbergh told Variety. "We were all frustrated." The reason for that frustration: Disney axed his planned Star Wars sequel - a film centered on the younger years of Ben Solo, Han and Leia's son who becomes Kylo Ren - without ever asking what it would cost to make. Not a budget conversation. Not a "can you bring this in for X?" Not even a cursory inquiry into whether the numbers could work. The project was simply discontinued.
That detail matters more than it might seem. The conventional explanation for why studios pass on projects usually involves economics - too expensive, projected returns too uncertain, risk-adjusted value too low. Soderbergh's account suggests something different was happening at Disney: a decision-making process so insulated from practical filmmaking reality that a director of his caliber couldn't even get to a budget conversation. The project died in committee and no one apparently thought to ask what it would actually cost.
"We were all frustrated" implies this wasn't just Soderbergh sitting alone with a rejected treatment. There were other people involved - writers, producers, presumably development executives who had shepherded the project to a certain stage. All of them apparently shared the experience of watching something they believed in evaporate without the basic creative dialogue that should precede such a decision.
The creative and commercial logic for the film was, on the surface, compelling. Ben Solo's arc in the sequel trilogy - from Han's beloved son to the dark-side apprentice of Snoke - was arguably the most psychologically rich material the franchise offered, and the films themselves only gestured at it. A prequel directed by Soderbergh, one of the few American filmmakers capable of working simultaneously at the arthouse and at genuine commercial scale, might have been exactly what the Star Wars brand needed after the sequel trilogy's divisive reception.
Instead, it joins the long list of Star Wars films that almost happened: Josh Trank's Boba Fett project, Rian Johnson's reported trilogy, Patty Jenkins's Rogue Squadron. Each cancellation has its own story. Soderbergh's adds a particular institutional detail to the genre: a film that never got a fair hearing.
How many other projects died the same way - not because of cost, not because of quality, but because the decision was made before anyone asked the basic questions? In Hollywood, that may not be an anomaly. It may be the norm.
