Ryan Gosling stars in new Star Wars movie, Shawn Levy to direct
Ryan Gosling will star in Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter, which takes place five years after The Rise of Skywalker.
No one has actually appeared in “Star Wars,” except maybe Adam Driver.
The actor revealed that he spent two years planning a Star Wars movie featuring his character Ben Solo, but Disney killed the idea.
USA TODAY has reached out to Disney and Lucasfilm for comment.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Driver said he and director Steven Soderbergh would like to make a movie about Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren, set after 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, which ended with him sacrificing his life to save Rey (Daisy Ridley).
According to Driver, he went to Soderbergh with a concept and then the director outlined the story with Rebecca Brandt. The trio pitched the idea to Lucasfilm executives who were on board. From there, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns was assigned to write the screenplay.
But Driver said Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman rejected the film, which was supposed to be titled “The Hunt for Ben Solo.”
“We submitted the script to Lucasfilm,” Driver told The Associated Press. “They loved the idea. They completely understood our angle and why we were doing it. We brought it to Bob Iger and Alan Bergman, and they said no. They didn’t understand how Ben Solo lived, and that was it.”
Driver called it “one of the coolest scripts” he had ever worked on, and expressed confusion as to why Disney didn’t want to make the film.
“We wanted to do it in the same spirit of being fair in how we spend our money and how we save it, and making it cheaper than other films, handcrafted and character-driven,” he told The Associated Press. “In my opinion, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ was the standard for those movies.”
Driver also told the AP that he was “always” interested in doing more Star Wars films after “The Rise of Skywalker,” and that he was “talking about doing another one starting in 2021.”
Driver starred as Kylo Ren, the main villain in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, from 2015’s The Force Awakens to 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. In The Force Awakens, Kylo, born Ben Solo, is revealed to be the son of Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford). In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey and Leia help Ben reject the dark side of the Force, and Ben becomes the hero of the film’s closing act.
In the finale of The Rise of Skywalker, Ben uses the Force to revive Rey after she dies in a battle with Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), at the cost of his own life. The decision to kill off Ben was controversial in the Star Wars fan community, with some wanting to see the character alive to explore his retrospective journey in future films.
Notably, Ben doesn’t appear as a Force ghost after death, as Force users typically do in the series, and some fans have theorized that there may be a way to capitalize on that and bring him back.
On social media, Driver’s revelations sparked a wave of calls for Disney to make the movie he described. “This movie needs to happen,” said an X post from a Star Wars news account.
Driver’s comments come after Disney seemed to be struggling for years to decide on the right way to bring Star Wars back to theaters after The Rise of Skywalker, which ended the film series with mixed reviews and received mixed reviews from critics and fans. Since then, numerous Star Wars movie projects have been announced, then seemingly abandoned.
But the series is finally set to return to theaters next summer with The Mandalorian and Grogu, a movie that continues the story of The Mandalorian. The Star Wars movie Star Wars: Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling, is scheduled for release next year.
Disney also announced a Star Wars movie in 2023 that would bring Ridley back after The Rise of Skywalker and see Rey rebuild the Jedi Order. No release date has been set for the film, and it’s unclear whether Driver will be involved.
