The best news Star Wars fans have received since we watched in disgust as Luke Skywalker tossed away his father’s lightsaber in The Last Jedi (2017), is that Lucasfilm would dump franchise serial killer Kathleen Kennedy by the end of this year.
Well, once again, Kennedy has decided to crush the hopes and dreams of Star Wars fans by announcing that she is not retiring. All the news about her retiring was fake news.
Or, is it…?
After six paragraphs of far-left Deadline shamelessly sucking up to Kennedy — “Kennedy arguably is the most successful female producer/executive in Hollywood history … a first-ballot Hall of Famer, not someone who deserves to be batted around like a piñata” — the CorporateSpeak is off the charts.
The whole interview is premised on the news of her retirement as Lucasfilm boss being fake news. Here is her answer to the first question…
“The truth is, and I want to just say loud and clear, I am not retiring. I will never retire from movies. I will die making movies. That is the first thing that’s important to say. I am not retiring.”
Okay, but then we get this…
“What’s happening at Lucasfilm is I have been talking for quite some time with both Bob and Alan about what eventual succession might look like.”
And then, later in the interview, we get this exchange:
DEADLINE: How far down the road do you expect before a change gets made and then you go off and produce these two big Star Wars things?
KENNEDY: We’ll probably make an announcement months or a year out, and I have every intention of sticking around to help that person be successful. I’m already producing the Mandalorian movie, and Shawn Levy’s is after that.
The “change” here is Kennedy stepping down as Lucasfilm boss “months or a year out.”
Then, at the end of the interview, when asked if she will exit as Lucasfilm boss this year, she says: “We really don’t know at this stage. There’s so much going on, Mike. I don’t know.”
So…
The Disney Grooming Syndicate is looking for a successor.
She could be gone by the end of the year.
But it’s still fake news that she could be gone by the end of the year.
The whole interview is Exhibit A in how the Penske Media Monopoly kisses up to Big Entertainment Business. They want access, they want the advertising dollars, so they act as publicists with questions like this: “This flurry of press coverage, it sounds like chaos. What’s the reality?”
When you read the interview, you can actually hear the echo that comes from the interviewer being stuck so far up Kathleen Kennedy’s ass.
Me? I’m done with Star Wars. No one told me this would require a 50-year commitment. So I have no emotional investment in whether the Star Wars ship is righted or not. What I do want to see is Kennedy face some accountability for her indefensible stewardship and destruction of two once-invincible franchises (Star Wars and Indiana Jones) — and that means losing her job. Afterwards, she’ll strut around as the emperor with no clothes, and her sycophants in the media will pretend she’s not naked by bestowing awards and tributes upon her, but we will know — Normal People will know.
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