I’m late to this one, as I’ve been looking into some of the hints Steven Soderbergh has sprinkled inside his annual “Seen, Read 2025.”
In case you’re unaware, every year Soderbergh keeps a daily log of what he watched, listened to, and read—a sort of annual media consumption list. It’s a fun read, one that puts us inside the media habits of one of the bigger directorial names in American cinema.
No surprise, the media headlines will focus on how much “Star Wars” Soderbergh consumed this past year, which very likely had to do with his now-canceled “The Hunt For Ben Solo,” which he was going to direct, Scott Z. Burns had written, with Adam Driver set to star.
And what about Soderbergh’s repeated viewings of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” a film that turned 50 last year and which Soderbergh openly cited as a master class in how to direct a film? This connects to “Production 02074,” which, according to Soderbergh’s note accompanying his personal website, “Production 02074 is the JAWS project [I’ve] been working on for forever.” The Playlist confirms that it’s a book.
Other little bread crumbs include Soderbergh seeing Daniel Goldhaber’s “Faces of Death,” which has been stuck in post production limbo for over two years now. As far as rewatches go, this year Soderbergh revisited “Blade Runner 2049,” “The Social Network,” “Barry Lyndon,” “The Hunt For Red October,” “Citizen Kane,” “Rear Window,” and “Con Air.”
More curiously, his 2025 included finishing the “draft” for “The Other Hamilton”—an HBO Max project announced in 2022 and described as tackling “Black Wall Street.” Soderbergh also wrote a new draft of “The Sot-Weed Factor,” a mini-series that was supposed to star Clive Owen back in 2013 and was widely assumed to have been put on the backburner.
Then there are the titles we know nothing about—“Bloodworth Manor,” “Ascenso.”
As it stands, and coming off a 2025 that saw him premiering three films, Soderbergh has not announced a new film project just yet. In fact, he’s expressed “frustration” over the lackluster receipts of his acclaimed “Black Bag,” which underperformed commercially and opened Soderbergh’s eyes to the harsh new realities of original filmmaking at the box office.