Kathleen Kennedy Wants to Leave Lucasfilm on a “Big Win”

Movies

For years, Star Wars fans dissatisfied with the franchise since Lucasfilm’s acquisition by Disney in 2012 have been hoping for Kathleen Kennedy, the president of the company since George Lucas sold it to Disney, to leave. Now, it looks like their wish may come true… under certain circumstances. The figure most responsible for the transformation of Star Wars from the uplifting, aspirational hero’s journey it was to the depressing, morally gray, revisionist deconstruction it’s become is apparently interested in leaving. This report comes from Film Threat founder Chris Gore, a veteran of entertainment news since 1985, who was recently the first to reveal that Marvel Studios had secretly fired all of its woke producers and will attempt to right its wayward movie ship. Gore appeared on WDW Pro’s livestream and said that Kathleen Kennedy is ready to retire from Lucasfilm with one caveat: she wants to go out on “a big win.” You can see the segment below:

That she thought her big win would be Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is hilarious. Imagine watching that monstrosity and thinking it would be the perfect swan song with which to pass into legend. And it was just the latest in a string of Kathleen Kennedy disasters, something it can no longer claim to be because Ahsoka and The Acolyte have come out since then. Before Indy 5, we’d seen various Star Wars shows on Disney+, the diminishing returns of the sequel trilogy – which divided the fandom immensely, especially with The Last Jedi – the failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story, and even the destruction of Willow via a follow-up TV series that bombed so badly it was removed from Disney+ and locked away, never to see the light of day again. Even when Lucasfilm had its biggest win in The Mandalorian, they managed to screw it up, and rumors said it was due to Kennedy exerting her power over Jon Favreau and elevating Dave Filoni, the guy who made Ahsoka, over the guy who made Iron Man. Then, there’s the failed Star Wars hotel, Galactic Starcruiser, that brilliantly priced its target audience out of renting a room.

Does Kathleen Kennedy have a win on the horizon? It’s hard to say. I think her biggest shot would be The Mandalorian and Grogu, the movie sequel to the Disney+ series. The Mandalorian has the most goodwill of any Star Wars project in the Disney era (with the possible exception of Andor, which people who watched it seem to love – but most people didn’t watch it), but it squandered much of that with its third season. In fact, it began losing what it had built between seasons, when the season 2 finale’s major plot development was wrapped up and essentially retconned in another series, The Book of Boba Fett. That was bad enough, but it was far from the worst season 3 had to offer loyal fans, and some of the series-killing elements – dropping Mando’s plot thread about the Darksaber, having him be constantly rescued and outclassed before ultimately being replaced by imaginary-modern-audience-friendly Bo-Katan, painting the New Republic as no better than the Empire – had Kennedy’s fingerprints all over them. Are enough people still interested enough to pay to see a movie?

Other than that, there’s the Rey movie Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is directing, which appears to feature Rey firmly taking Luke Skywalker’s place as the central figure in the Star Wars saga by stealing his storyline and rebuilding the Jedi Order. Obaid-Chinoy has said it will be about Rey navigating being a female Jedi and all that entails, which not only seems to overlook that there were plenty of female Jedi long before Rey but sounds about as fun as drinking spoiled milk in the middle of the desert. And there’s that James Mangold prequel, Dawn of the Jedi, which we haven’t heard much about because it’s still being written. Neither of them sounds like a winner to me. If she’s really stuck on having a grand, victorious exit, I think Kathleen Kennedy will be around for a long, long time.