Kathleen Kennedy 2023 Exit Chances and What the Near Future Holds for Star Wars

I believe GL put Kathleen Kennedy there, not Iger. Who would replace such an experienced and talent executive such as Kennedy?

It would be difficult to find someone who would take on such an IP.

John Campea, a former attorney will not say anything unless he knows for sure it's legit; however, I think it's partially true. I've been following Campea for years now, and he is usually spot on, but I truly believe Kennedy will depart LFL when she is ready.

When she does indeed leave the franchise, whoever is running Disney will be scurrying about to to find an appropriate replacement.

Kennedy could appoint someone herself, which would put it all on her if the IP crashes and burns further. I don't think Iger has an appropriate replacement. He has asked around and no one wants the job. Its a daunting task, so I commend KK for doing the best she can, and now we know she is more of an Indy fan, than a Star Wars fan, which would make it much more difficult to run such an enormous IP. So I forgive her mistakes...

 

He's been wrong before and his track record on Star Wars stuff hasn't been very good.

Carrie Beck makes a lot of sense. She's been involved in a little of everything at Lucasfilm. She's a little more on the creative side of producing and she has worked a long time with Filoni. I would suspect that Kennedy stays on until the next few movies are up an running and makes way for someone like Beck who has been around awhile and will see things out from a Lucasfilm perspective.

 

Great choice considering Beck has worked with Filoni.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 7, 2022, Original Post Date: Dec 7, 2022 ---

I agree, he has been wrong before, but my point is he doesn't just dish out rumors unless there is some credibility behind it, but you are totally right about that.

--- Double Post Merged, Dec 7, 2022 ---

This reminds me of the James Gunn situation, somewhat... no one wanted the director's chair for Suicide Squad, or was it Guardians of the Galaxy, when Gunn was terminated. Some of the best directors would not touch his films, mostly out of respect. This is of course a different situation, but somewhat similar... Iger has approached individuals, and most of them did not want to take the job due to their relationship with Kennedy.

So even though it might be true that Iger wants Kennedy gone, never mind their relationship... this is business, does he have anyone to nail the coffin?

Again, I'm not on Kennedy side, I would agree that someone should replace her, but who, is the question? Who would take it? who would do well?

Kevin Feige can not, he has the MCU to deal with, unless he wants to take a break from the MCU, since everyone is saying Phase 4 isn't so good, which I don't agree with.

@DailyPlunge have you ever submitted a superchat on Campea's show?

 

I haven't, but I did meet him at Celebration a few years ago. I haven't watched him much since he left Collider. I didn't think he carried himself well after the D23/Andor thing.

 

There have been people who supposedly have 'sources' indicating that KK will be let go anytime now, this has been going on pretty much since she took the role. I believe that is all click bait supposition with no genuine intel. In reality I'm sure at some point KK will resign on her own terms and of course those people will say they called it.

 

Is this some angry Star Wars fan's letter to Santa?

Might as well have started to the article, "....ever since night turned to day there has been speculation about Kathleen Kennedy...."

People have been making logical sense of KK's imminent departure on a daily basis.

I love the implication that the rumour wouldn't be worth repeating, unless...... How does that apply to the bazillion times the rumour has been repeated these past ten years? There has NEVER been a rumour about Kennedy departing that hasn't been seen as worth reporting by all SW fan media and news outlets. Bar none.

 

One day the rumor will accidentally be true. And people will always claim she got fired. But actually she's 69 now. She could quit her job any day just because she wants to. Not everyone in that business wants to work until they're 90 years old.

 

I'm not anti-Kathleen Kennedy! But I do think she should have stuck to her strengths... producing.
I don't care who is going to replace her, as long he/she is the best person for the job!

Her "different approach to the ST was illconceived, you can do that with a franchise that has gone stale after a plethora of badly written/made sequels, to refresh the heart of the story... but a franchise as beloved and closely scrutinised as Star Wars (Star Trek and Stargate similarly) you need to handle much more carefully and thought through!

I seriously hope she doesn't leave "the business" alltogether, but keeps producing movies in the forseeable future.

 

i'm so tired of the kennedy obsession

 

KK is 69 years old for crying out loud. She'll be retiring any time now. I suspect that she's planning to call it quits after the next Indy movie but it will happen regardless sooner rather than later at this point.

She's certainly done some good things: Like encouraging Jon Favreau to kick off Disney+ with a new SW series and hooking him up with Dave Filoni. But on the movie-side of the business, she was certainly no Kevin Feige. And all the drama we got inside of Lucasfilm was (IMO) a sign of poor senior management.

But it seems to me that after a rocky TLJ and TROS, the Lucasfilm World has settled down. It'll be in great shape for whomever Iger picks to succeed her once she decides to say farewell.

 

While I'm not wholly for or against KK and I do agree that her approach to the ST was poorly managed and ill-conceived, I understand respect her approach as I understand it.
Kathleen Kennedy in my eyes is pro-creator, in that she wants the projects she greenlights to excite the creators of said projects. That means giving them free reign in a lot of ways. For the directors of the ST that meant a round-robin style of filmmaking handoffs. This is poor management when you need a tightly woven and thematically resonant trilogy however. (Not that it CAN'T work, but it's not ideal IMO. It's like not studying for a test and getting an A, and then deciding not to study because it worked for you before.)
But other projects that would never been greenlit by other students - or in some cases, were greenlit by other studios and comparative entities and haven't seen nearly the same amount of praise - are greenlit under Kathleen. Visions, The Bad Batch, The Mandalorian, Resistance (which was terrible, but hey she gave the heads free reign), JFO, and The High Republic have flourished or continued to flourish under her. It's hard to imagine that comparative entities would allow such creativity and free thought within to their franchise within the first couple of years of new leadership.
But that doesn't mean that Lucasfilm is blind or helpless or without fault. I do believe that Star Wars needs a visionary as well as a competent leader*, not a reactive and mostly laissez-faire sort of leader. (Not mentioned, my feelings on the treatment and representation of people of color within Star Wars and the wider SFF community.)

That being said...

I can't disagree...

Can't speak for the first part of the sentence since I haven't watched any Mando interviews in a few years (although it seems very accurate after a quick Wiki search!), but I do know that Filoni and Favreau worked together on TCW, since Favreau was the voice of Pre Vizla.

At the end of the day, if she leaves, I'm curious to see what kind of person is brought in to succeed her. If she stays, I'm curious to see how many of her current projects make it to fans.

*These two roles don't have to be the same person, but if they aren't, the two people need to be on the same page.

 

I think people are forgetting that Disney/Iger had a strong hand on the ST from the very beginning. It seems like they've learned their lesson because it's the Disney timeline on Solo and TROS that ended up being a big problem. After Fisher's death that last film needed to be delayed until a story could be sorted out. Solo should have been released in December. Again, that's a Disney decision. I give KK credit in taking big swings with Edwards/Lord/Miller. She was able to save Rogue One with Gilroy stepping in and Ron Howard did a pretty good job with Solo. The weakest stuff they've done is because of story constraints with (Han/Kenobi/Fett). Considering the massive amount of content they've created she's done an amazing job. The success of Disney+ is mostly because of the wild success of Mando. TROS was the worst Cinemascore ever for a Star Wars film, but it still grossed over a billion b/c those characters were so loved.

She hasn't been perfect (no one is perfect), but I don't have any major gripes despite not loving everything. My fear is someone from Disney starts meddling again.

 

Let's be honest. Some will just cannot forgive her for not validating their fan theories five years ago.

All the speculation about the "right time" and all sorts of other reasons why now she really will be going, logically, is just about Kennedy finally paying for leaving them out of the loop.

 

I'm not talking about the timeline, but the process of KK choosing people to direct (which is an easy through-line to spot) and how she didn't give oversight or a clear vision for the story unless it was someone else's story. Kathleen's habit of her projects more or less amounting to "that sounds good, run with it" isn't the best, particularly for a trilogy that ended up being rushed.* (And yes, I'm aware that KK had to fight and beg for the December release dates due to delays and Harrison Ford's injury.)
Solo's financial loss isn't on KK's head, but how she chose the original directors and the messy outcome of that IS her own fault IMO.

*Again, it's given us a LOT of good things that I'm happy we have, but a visionary for where Star Wars is still needed IMO.

 

Let's step back and take a 10,000 foot view of this claim. Look at the talent Lucasfilm has brought in to make content:

- JJ Abrams
- Rian Johnson
- Tony Gilroy
- Jon Favreau
- Ron Howard

That's not even discussing the writing teams for these projects which include some very talented people. It's not her job to give story ideas to story tellers. That's the job of writers and directors. Her job is to get these projects on time, on budget, and be well made. This isn't science. Is there a filmmaker or producer who has a 100% winning track record? Please name this person. This idea the sequel trilogy failed because it wasn't 100% planned out is the figment of amateur filmmakers online who don't understand how the process works. Vince Gilligan had an idea where Breaking Bad was going, but it wasn't all planned out. Lucasfilm had an idea where the ST was going but it wasn't 100% planned out. One place it was going was the mother redeeming the son as a nod to the son redeeming the father in the OT. Fisher dying really wrecked the last chapter. I don't know how you make that 3rd film without her.

This is the problem with the trilogy structure. It's why future films won't be built that way because it forces you to wrap everything up in one film and it couldn't be done after the death of a major actor in the story. The problem wasn't that Kennedy didn't have a story for episode 9. The problem was Disney wanted the movie made and the actor who as a major part of it died. Kennedy fixed Rogue One when it was floundering 8 months before release. She brought in Ron Howard when Lord/Miller struggled. That's what a producer does when there are problems. Sometimes it works (Rogue One) and sometimes it doesn't (Solo), but at least Solo wasn't a disaster.

 

Your Honor, I plead quilty as charged.

However, I would offer up the TFA 'teases' and the final two films, Episodes 8 and 9, being billed as the completion of 'The Skywalker Saga' as a partial defense.

 

Both of them were hot off of previous projects, which is the main through-line. KK also brought in:

Gareth Edwards when he was hot off Godzilla 2014 (whose movie had to be saved by Tony Gilroy)
Josh Trank when he was hot off of Chronicle (whose movie never got off the ground due to how he mishandled Fan4stic)
Colin Trevorrow right after he made 1 billion dollars with Jurassic World (whose movie failed due to his inability to find a workable solution to Carrie Fisher's passing...and after The Book of Henry was a total flop)
Benioff & Weiss's movie series while they were still pleasing people with Game of Thrones (...which failed admittedly not because of Kennedy but the pattern still is there.)
Phil Lord and Chris Miller after they were acclaimed for The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street (remake IIRC) (which ended so horribly that Ron Howard had to take over a reshoot a majority of the film)

Patty Jenkins and several of EA's properties apply as well IMO, but that's just me. The point is that KK was looking for people who could bring a level of status and name-brand popularity to Star Wars at the time, rather than trying to fit the best director/creative team to the project.

These two came to KK with their own ideas AFAIK, and Kennedy said "go for it." Again, that's part of the good of her management style.

It doesn't need to be improve show either. There are historical examples on how to create trilogies, from movies to books to shows to stinkin' classical theater.

Agreed, she's not the visionary. But she needs one. Fiege doesn't always give ideas to his directors, but he tells them "this is where we're going, and this is what we need. Bring your vision on how to get there and your personal style and flairs." KK doesn't didn't do that with the ST and doesn't really seem to do that overall, which leads to connective stories being...less than they should be, unless some other visionary is involved.

You don't have to. Recasting Leia was always an option. An option that they chose not to take, but it's not as if they physically or morally couldn't do it. Carrie Fisher didn't voice Leia in every single role over the decades, so finding someone to emulate her voice isn't impossible either. (Or create an AI to do it.) Or they could have CGI'd her in, like they did with Tarkin and sort of did with Young Leia in Rogue One. JJ and Lucasfilm chose a specific way to depict Leia in TROS and honor her memory in a way they deemed appropriate, but that comes with consequences that the story they wanted to tell didn't want to handle. Would this be controversial? Absolutely. People are attached to names, faces, and people, particularly when they've been in that role for decades. But if it means finishing the story in a way that honors both the actor, the character, and the legacies of both, then killing the nostalgia is the way to go.
(Or, you know, kill her off-screen and then have the movie deal with her death that way. Then again, Wakanda Forever tried that and it failed IMO.**)

YMMV on how well she's successfully she's done that. Again, she has her flaws but I'm not really for or against her overall.

It's the MAJOR reason why it doesn't work as a trilogy to me, not the only one. The movies more or less work independently (except for TROS, which sucks). Even TFA and TLJ work as two parts of a greater whole. But thematically, it doesn't stick the landing. Character-development-wise, it's messy and obtuse. Those are things trilogies should avoid being, something that planning helps with.
Also, it's not like planning means that everything will go according to plan. (Insert Eisenhower quote "Plans are Useless but Planning is Indispensable" with application here.) Planning ahead means that you know where pressure gauges are, where arcs need to be and where individuality can bloom. Planning can mean that even if something unexpected arises, you can see how it affects the story or project at large and pivot accordingly. You can't truly see the effects of a ripple (or a splash) if you can only see part of the pond.

Breaking Bad is a positive example, it isn't the only example in the world or even the best one to follow. Arrow had an idea of where its Season 4 was going to go when it started, but no real plan. It's the worst season in the show, because they promised something they realized they couldn't fully deliver on. The ST was similar. (Although this is JJ's M.O., not KK's fault.)

Hence this conversation. If Lucasflim had everything* planned out, we'd probably be talking about whether or not the plan was successful, not whether or not they really had one.

This isn't a problem if your final part is built for that role and the creators have planned appropriately. (Or, you know, you don't fit 1.5 movies into 1 movie, and just go with what was before so that things can go smoothly.)

Trilogies are fine. Trilogies are great! But trilogies involve a personality that KK doesn't have and Igor didn't feel like Disney could afford, because - surprise, surprise! - they take work, time, and effort.

And KK's one of the best in the game, if not the best. No one's doubting her producing ability (or if they are it certainly isn't me). I just think that her company managing style has had some major flaws and blessings. She's hired a lot of directors for clout, and it blew up in her face multiple times. She's also given directors and creators with vision the space to fully realize their vision. If she stays, it's more creative projects realized. If she leaves, I'm curious to see who takes her place and what sort of management style they'll have.



**I think that's because to me, WF is a movie that shouldn't have considered that path while for Star Wars, it would have been a more viable one.

 

You claim here is 100% speculation so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it other than point out Kennedy one of the most successful producers of all time. Her track record speaks for itself. She never gets credit when a project works out and she's to blame if someone didn't like a film/TV show. It's bizarre.

She's produced 4 films that made over a billion at the box office. The success of the TV series have helped make Disney+ a powerhouse streamer.

The only planned out Star Wars trilogy are the prequels and it's easily the worst one. It was also the only one with a single vision/director.

I'm not going to indulge this further since if a person thinks she's a problem then there's probably nothing I can say to change your mind. I will say no one in the industry seems to share this internet point-of-view that she's some kind of problem.

 

(Quick Note, 2 & 3 only apply if you're insinuating that I'm part of the generalization that you're making about this discussion. If not, feel free to skip.)
1. It's a pattern, and one that's easily traced and with causative data to be found. (Look up when the director's previous movies were released in correlation to their hiring at Lucasfilm.)

2. I never said her track record DIDN'T speak for herself. I use her track record when hiring directors for Lucasfilm as a way to speak for her hiring M.O. Or do you mean as a producer? Because I ALSO said she's one of the best of all time, if not the best. You want me to say it again?
KATHLEEN KENNEDY IS ONE OF THE BEST PRODUCERS IN FILMMAKING HISTORY, IF NOT THE BEST. I have NO problems with her producing, only her management style, which I keep saying is both a good and a bad thing.

3. I don't think I've ever NOT given KK credit where credit is due. If so, I certainly didn't mean to skip out on her credit. I think the issue here is that giving her credit for her producing stuff pre-LF feels similar to real-world analogues (that I'm only going to allude to and not outright mention). Yes, KK is one of the GOATs, but it's her tenure at LF that people seem to take issue with, rightly or not.

And each one was riddled with internal and/or external controversies. That's what I meant by "successfully." Sorry I didn't make that clear. TFA was probably the most successfully due to production and release only having a fright with Harrison Ford's crash.

TLJ - Produced on-time, on-budget, and early, saw a resurgence of some of the worst the Star Wars fandom has to offer. (None of it was RJ or KK's fault in terms of the reaction to the film, but it does stain both production and the fans. RJ's work on Star Wars was more or less put on hold for an extended time because of it IMO.*)

RO - Incredibly messy production, with massive reshoots and extensive post-production work that made the news. (On the bright side, it educated a lot of people on what post-production and reshoots actually are.)

TROS - Produced on-time (for the December release), but the production has had a few rumors about the script post-release, and the marketing was so full of spoilers that Burger King in Europe was offering free meals if fans would be willing to know the leaks! (Yes, leaks are commonplace when you run as big a ship as LF, but the point is that no other company has a restaurant willing to give out coupons to those who tell the spoilers.)

Again, this response only applies if this comment is directed at me, since it really feels like it is. (Which may be my own fault.)
Personally, I don't hate KK. I don't think she's a problem, but I think some of her managing (read: managing not producing) approach is problematic. She's given us some of the best Star Wars in years, and some of the worst. Some of it was her own fault, but not nearly as much as people blame her for.
But just because you don't fully agree with something and you critique it, that doesn't mean you can't love it or respect it. It's not a binary and trying to paint this discussion between us or the whole discussion at large as a binary thing - especially on this forum - feels like a disservice to everyone involved. You're not going to change people's minds all the time, but I think it's important to hear what others are trying to say as well. Either way, despite me not fully agreeing with you and not disagreeing as much as you think, this has been an interesting conversation. Back to the void as well.




*Now THIS you can call out as speculation. Still, I firmly believe that if TLJ hadn't received the reaction it did (from a very vocal and annoying part of the fandom), RJ would alternate between the Knives Out films and Star Wars.