Jake Coyle, reporting for the AP:

Driver says he took a concept to Soderbergh for a film that would take place after 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.” That movie culminated in Ren’s redemption and apparent death. Driver had undertaken the trilogy with an arc in mind for Ren that inverted the journey of Darth Vader. As the trilogy evolved, it didn’t play out that way. Driver felt there was unfinished business for Kylo Ren, or as he was known before turning to the Dark Side, Ben Solo.

Soderbergh and Rebecca Blunt outlined a story that the group then pitched to Kennedy, Lucasfilm vice president Cary Beck and Lucasfilm chief creative officer Dave Filoni. They were interested, so the filmmakers then pulled in Scott Z. Burns to write a script. Driver calls the result “one of the coolest (expletive) scripts I had ever been a part of.”

“We presented the script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea. They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it,” Driver says. “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.”

“It was called ‘The Hunt for Ben Solo’ and it was really cool,” adds Driver. “But it is no more, so I can finally talk about it.”

Soderbergh, in a statement, said: “I really enjoyed making the movie in my head. I’m just sorry the fans won’t get to see it.”

So an entire trilogy based on the dumb idea that Emperor Palpatine somehow survived Darth Vader tossing him down a 50-mile deep shaft into a hyper-matter reactor, that was fine. But a Steven-Fucking-Soderbergh-helmed Star Wars movie that maybe would’ve required a little bit of a shrug to accept the premise, nope.