Daisy Ridley starred as Rey opposite Adam Driver as Kylo Ren/Ben Solo in three “Star Wars” movies between 2015 and 2019, so consider her shocked when news broke in October about the scrapped standalone “Star Wars” movie “The Hunt for Ben Solo.” Driver revealed the film’s existence in an interview with the Associated Press, explaining he had been developing a Ben Solo movie for two years with director Steven Soderbergh. Then Disney executives pulled the plug on them.

“I knew a piece of it. I heard rumblings,” Ridley told IGN. “I have lots of friends who are crew, so things always travel like that. But, whoa! When the story came out, no, I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ And it was him that said it, right? It was funny because, like, ‘Oh, wow, Adam is saying it,’ and that’s the big surprise of the year.”

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Ridley is no stranger to dealing with divisive “Star Wars” fans given the polarizing responses to “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” which is why it was so heartening to see the fandom come together in support of “The Hunt for Ben Solo.”

“I do love when there is a collective of positivity,” Ridley said. “The way the internet seems to have rallied to try and get it to happen. It’s fantastic for us all. It’s good for us to all be united about something in a really positive way. Obviously, everyone knows he was a very popular character, but it was also lovely to think, ‘Wow, people really, really care and want this.’ I just… I like it.”

“I like when people join forces — excuse the pun — from all around the world, all different sorts of people,” she continued. “I just love that the ‘Star Wars’ fandom is such a huge and gorgeous array of different points of view and different people, and the fact that everyone is really behind this thing, I think, is just sort of lovely, in a time that is so fucking nuts for probably every single person on this Earth. I think it’s wonderful. So I was surprised, and honestly, I felt joyful about how it went down.”

“The Hunt for Ben Solo” would have taken place after the events of “The Rise of Skywalker.” According to Driver, Soderbergh worked on the script with his “Logan Lucky” scribe Rebecca Blunt and longtime collaborator Scott Z. Burns (“Contagion,” “The Informant!”). Driver starred in Soderbergh’s “Logan Lucky” and Burns’ “The Report.”

“I always was interested in doing another ‘Star Wars,’” Driver told the AP. “I had been talking about doing another one since 2021. Kathleen [Kennedy] had reached out. I always said: ‘With a great director and a great story, I’d be there in a second.’ I loved that character and loved playing him.”

Driver loved “The Hunt for Ben Solo” script, calling it the “standard” of what a “Star Wars” movie “should be” and comparing it to the “handmade and character-driven” feel of “The Empire Strikes Back.” The Oscar nominee said Lucasfilm execs Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni and Cary Beck backed the project until Disney shut it down.

“We presented the script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea,” Driver recalled. “They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it. We took it to Bob Iger and Alan Bergman, and they said no. They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that.”

Driver’s interview mobilized “Star Wars” fans on social media into calling for Disney to reverse its decision and put “The Hunt for Ben Solo” back in development. A group of “Star Wars” fans even paid for a plane to fly a banner reading “Save ‘The Hunt for Ben Solo’” over Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif.

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