Turns out Soderbergh is still disappointed about not making this film. From
Brooklyn Magazine:
Last year, you finished drafts of Sotweed Factor, The Other Hamilton, Ascenso, and Bloodworth Manor. When did you change your mind about your idea that you are “not a writer”? Because it seems like you’re now doing a lot of writing.
Yeah, but I’m still not a writer. Having written doesn’t make you a writer anymore than having directed makes you a director. So, by my standards, I’m not a writer. I wrote to get in, and in this case, I was writing to get back in, because
I thought the next two years of my life were going to be spent making a Star Wars movie. And so, in the immediate aftermath of that, my response was, “You better start getting some shit generated so you can go back to work.”
I’ve been reading things, but my gut reaction when that went south was you can’t wait for things to come to you. You need to make some things happen. So I just sat down and wrote one thing after another. I got in that zone of generating material to make something happen. I’ve picked one of those to pursue. I don’t want to jinx it yet because it’s not set up. But the purpose was to essentially get in a time machine and pretend this is pre-1989. I’m starting over again. Back then, I would just write one thing after another, hoping that something would stick, and it turned out to be Sex Lies. And I’m kind of doing the same thing again.
Since you brought up Star Wars, I was reading the Kathleen Kennedy exit interview again before we got on the call. I think what surprised a lot of people from the outside was that it appears it was basically a green light, and then essentially the head of Disney kills it for “story reasons,” which has never stopped them from doing anything in the Star Wars universe. And I was wondering if that elucidated anything for you? Did you know how disappointed she was?
No, it was no surprise that she was frustrated. We were all frustrated. You know, that was two and a half years of free work for me and Adam and Rebecca Blunt. When Adam and I discussed him talking about it publicly, I said, “Look, do not editorialize or speculate about the why. Just say what happened, because all we know is what happened.” The stated reason was “We don’t think Ben Solo could be alive.” And that was all we were told. And so there’s nothing to do about it, you know, except move on.
And as I posted, I’d kind of made the movie in my head, and just felt bad that nobody else was going to get to see it. I thought the conversation was strictly going to be a practical one—where they go, what is this going to cost? And I had a really good answer for that. But it never even got to that point. It’s insane. We’re all very disappointed.
("Solo" had quite the development hell, but taking down some of the sophomoric humor late in the day while bringing in Maul as one hell of a hook could have gone somewhere. Maul was easily one of the best things about the 1997 prequel.)
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