Kathleen Kennedy Rumored To Stay On At Lucasfilm Because “No One Wants The Job”
John F. Trent
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A new rumor claims that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy will stay on in her position despite her disastrous leadership of the studio.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 15: Kathleen Kennedy arrives at the special 3-episode launch event for Lucasfilm’s original series Andor at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on September 15, 2022. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
This latest rumor comes after Lucasfilm’s latest box office endeavor Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny bombed at the box office. The film has only grossed $131 million at the domestic box office and another $126.7 million internationally for a global gross of $257.7 million.
Given these poor numbers and the film’s estimated production budget of $300 million, box office analyst OMB Reviews predicts the film is unlikely to reach $400 million globally and thus it will likely cost Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company around $250 million.
Not only is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny an epic disaster, but even the company’s flagship Disney+ series, The Mandalorian, is now suffering. Viewers of the series panned the recently released third season.
The Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes for the third season sits at a rotten 50%.
The Mandalorian Season 3 Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score
The company’s recently produced Willow series was not only canceled after just one season, The Walt Disney Company removed the entire series as part of a plan for a massive tax write off with The Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger remarking, “we realized that we made a lot of content that is not necessarily driving sub growth and we’re getting much more surgical about what it is we make.”
Even if you look past Kennedy’s handling of Lucasfilm and the results of this year, she’s only managed a decline. The Force Awakens opened up to a booming $2 billion at the box office globally. However, subsequent releases saw big declines. The Last Jedi only brought in $1.3 billion. Finally, The Rise of Skywalker barely eked over $1 billion. In between these films, Kennedy produced and oversaw Solo: A Star Wars Story, the first Star Wars film to definitively lose money.
Even on the company’s publishing front, it’s High Republic initiative has not found an audience after its opening book. A report analyzing Circana BookScan data by Upstream Reviews found that The High Republic sales have seen a “90% – 95% drop in sales between the launch with Light of the Jedi and the current High Republic novels in barely over two years.”
Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi (2017), Lucasfilm
Despite all these markers clearly showing that Kennedy has completely mismanaged Lucasfilm on nearly all fronts, this latest rumor implies she will stay on board as President of the company.
This new rumor comes from Matt McGloin of Cosmic Book News. He posted on Twitter, “Also asked about Kathleen Kennedy getting fired. Told no one wants the job so likely not happening.”
Matt McGloin Twitter
This rumor comes after one positing The Walt Disney Company was having heated meetings following the disastrous box office results of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. WDW Pro channel guest Mexican IronMan detailed this information based on his source inside The Walt Disney Company.
He said, “Meetings did happen that they were incredibly heated. There was a lot of heat in general related to Lucasfilm, related to the financial results. The way he described this to me this started with the layoffs and this isn’t helping anybody’s morale, or anybody’s sense of safety related to their jobs, just in general.”
“He told me specifically that what he heard come out of this meeting — and he’s close enough to know — that no major decisions are going to be done for two weeks from the release. To which I asked him, I said, ‘Well, wait this movie came out Wednesday is it two weeks from today or two weeks from last Wednesday, when is the two weeks, when does the clock start?’ And he said, no, they actually think– they’re going to wait two weeks from the weekend. So they’re gonna [wait] two full weeks including the weekends before any major announcements might happen about who might be held responsible for this.”
Yoda destroys the Jedi temple on Ahch-To with Force Lightning while Luke Skywalker looks on in horror in The Last Jedi (2017), Lucasfilm
He went on to reveal his source informed that the “proponents for Lucasfilm related to Indy, they’re under the impression that they think that their argument– The way I understand it from what he told me is that things are heated, no major decision was made per say, the proponents for Lucasfilm think this movie has some legs, and that the fact that it came out on the 4th of July is kind of a fluke because 4th of July fell on a Tuesday — and I’m just repeating what he told me —had it fallen on a say Friday, Saturday that more people would have gone and so they need two weeks to see what are the real legs of this.”
“And for whatever reason there are people within the Indy Lucasfilm camp or they’re in Disney and they’re supporting the sort of Kathleen Kennedy Lucasfilm agenda, their feeling is that this movie has some legs and that it’s actually a fair assessment to wait two weeks. So they’re going to wait. There’s gonna be some wait,” he asserted.
(L-R): Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
WDW Pro then shared his own information regarding this alleged meeting at Burbank, “[That Park Place Investigative Reporter] Jonas J. Campbell has come to the conclusion that based on the positions that we believe were involved in these meetings that this was at least executive director level, probably low level VPs involved in this.”
“The other thing that I’m hearing — again can’t tell you how I’m hearing this — nobody really believes that Lucasfilm is going to get this thing turned around. Disney has the same visibility in terms of the pre-sale tickets for this weekend that the trades do. The trades are seeing a 60% drop for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. That’s horrendous when you have low numbers already…”
The aftermath of the Holdo maneuver in The Last Jedi (2017), Lucasfilm
He then questioned, “Why then is Disney giving Lucasfilm this two to three week cover? Well, what I’m hearing is they’re trying to protect Harrison Ford and not for altruistic reasons, but because he’s involved in another major movie they have coming out next year and they need that movie to succeed. And they are trying to protect the press surrounding that. Because what happens if Disney comes out and says well you know it’s hard to get an action film to, you know, take off with someone of this age, nobody’s ever tried it before yada yada yada , right? That’s an easy excuse to come up with, but it would also throw under the bus your big star who’s supposed to be playing a major character in [Captain America: Brave New World.]
WDW Pro then speculated, “This is a bit of conjecture, but the thought has occurred now that Harrison Ford may even be released from having to do press tours, going around with the media when it comes to the release of [Captain America: Brave New World] to protect him from the fallout of this film and people asking him how does it feel for Indy to fail in such a way.”
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in Lucasfilm’s IJ5. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of this latest rumor that Kennedy will likely stay on board because no one else wants the job?
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