It’s been just over a year since Adam Driver first revealed that he and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh had tried to make a Star Wars movie further exploring his character, Ben Solo. Tentatively titled The Search for Ben Solo , the pair brought the idea, script and all, to Disney executives, who turned it down.

In the year since, Star Wars fans everywhere have dissected and discussed the idea, both what a Ben Solo movie could be and Disney’s reaction to it. Some fans even took things a step further, buying billboards and other physical marketing tactics in hopes of letting Disney know this is a movie we all want.

Here’s the good news. For the first time publicly, Driver acknowledged that he saw and appreciated the passion of the fans. “The fan response to it was pretty incredible,” Driver told Rich Eisen earlier this week. “I didn’t expect that it was going to be billboards and people flying planes over Disney and things like that.…