Adam Driver confirms he is the villain of Heat 2 and says Kylo Ren’s story is over

Adam Driver has a new villain lined up and has closed the door on his most famous one. On The Rich Eisen Show, the actor confirmed he will play Otis Wardell, the main antagonist of Michael Mann’s Heat 2, and said he does not expect to play Kylo Ren again.

Asked whether he was done with the character, Driver did not hesitate, as The Hollywood Reporter reported from the interview:

Yeah. It’s over. No more Star Wars.

Adam Driver, actor

That answer ends a campaign fans had kept alive. Driver spent roughly two years on The Hunt for Ben Solo, a standalone film set after The Rise of Skywalker, with Steven Soderbergh attached to direct and a script by Scott Burns, Rebecca Blunt, Soderbergh and Driver himself. Lucasfilm liked it, but Disney’s Bob Iger and Alan Bergman said no because they could not see how Ben Solo was alive, as Driver revealed in October 2025. Supporters answered with billboards and planes flown over Disney, which Driver called “pretty incredible”, though he believes “the ship has sailed”.

The Mann project looks like a fair consolation. Heat 2 adapts the director’s 2022 novel, which serves as both a prequel and a sequel to the 1995 crime classic with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale and Stephen Graham have reportedly joined the cast. Driver, who already worked with Mann on Ferrari, said the script is even tighter than the book and called the film “a missile”.

He joins the production in early December, with cameras rolling at the start of next year. Before that, Driver stars alongside Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller in Paper Tiger, which opens in theaters on November 13.

Reported by The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter (Heat 2), The Rich Eisen Show. Compiled with AI tools.