Kathleen Kennedy Says ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Only Regret During Lucasfilm Presidency: “Fundamentally, Conceptually, You Cannot Replace Han Solo”
With the sun setting on her tenure as Lucasfilm president, Kathleen Kennedy says that despite the many, many lows the studio hit during her time at its helm, she has no real regrets towards her stewardship of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and even Willow – Well, except “a bit of regret” towards the ill-fated Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Officially stepping down on January 15th and handing off her duties to current Lucasfilm chief creative officer and showrunner Dave Filloni and studio executive VP Lynwen Brennan, who will respectively serve as President and Co-President while divvying up creative and financial responsibilities, Kennedy offered this reflection on her recent efforts while discussing her major career shake-up with Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr.
At one point asked by her host as to what she ultimately felt had been “the highs and lows of running a company built on such beloved IP”, the now-former studio head began her reply by declaring “The highs include realizing how many people love Star Wars.”
“The majority of people, and certainly the people that I run into, and people outside the business, they love Star Wars. They love the movies, they might love all the shows, they might love some of the shows. But when I came into this, I realized a few things. We had walked in at a moment when there hadn’t been any movies for 10 years or more, but there was still the memory of the greatest series of movies in cinema history.
“So you’re walking into something that has enormous expectations. Yet at the same time, you know that you’ve got to find new characters and you have to expand the galaxy, and you need to think about who the new audience is. That’s what I feel that I did, and that’s what I feel all the people that I’ve worked with over this last decade did. The highs include bringing in a new audience. I think we did find new characters. We continue to find new characters.”
Turning to “the lows”, Kennedy admitted that, at the top of her list, was how “You’ve got a very, very small percentage of the fan base that has enormous expectations and basically they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing.”
“And if you’re not going to do that, then you know going in that you’re going to disappoint them. I’m not sure there’s anything you can do about that, because you can’t please everybody. All you can do is try to tell good stories and try to stick to the essence of what George [Lucas] created. He embedded incredible values into Star Wars and what it has to say. The whole idea of hope and fun and entertainment in what he’s done over all these years, that’s what I tried to preserve.
“And I wouldn’t do that any differently and I wouldn’t change anything that we’ve done over the years. I understand why some people may like certain things more than others, but that’s not going to change why I decided to do certain things and why I decided to work with the people that we worked with.
“I think everybody that came into the Star Wars space, they love Star Wars, and that was first and foremost important. You want to have people coming into Star Wars, and wanting to tell stories and wanting to make movies and wanting to create television shows that you respect and care about. Jon Favreau is completely different than Tony Gilroy, and yet they’re both incredibly talented storytellers. I found it thrilling to support each one of them in trying to tell the stories they wanted to tell.
“That’s what I think I do well, and that’s what I like to do and want to continue to do. And hopefully that took Star Wars into the next step. We’ll see in the long run, but it feels like it did. I feel like we expanded the universe, we brought new audiences in. And I think that’s the most difficult thing to do with franchises in general. But especially with something like Star Wars, where George just created something that became a part of everybody’s childhood. Every single filmmaker that walks in and wants to work on Star Wars, the first thing they say to me, the first thing I hear is, ‘Let me tell you about when I went to see Star Wars for the first time with my dad.'”
To this end, Kennedy was ultimately pressed as to whether there were any projects “you wish you had back and maybe you could have done better with more time, or that you let go of something you’d love to have seen get made and released?”, to which she confidently affirmed, “No, I don’t really have any regrets” before immediately offering the slight correction, “Well, maybe a bit of regret about Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
Elaborating on her feelings towards Disney Star Wars era’s forgotten sheep, Kennedy explained, “I brought Larry Kasdan in on, and we were so excited about that idea. And then when you’re into something and you realize fundamentally, conceptually, you cannot replace Han Solo, at least right now.”
“As wonderful as Alden Ehrenreich was, and he really was good, and is a wonderful actor, we put him in an impossible situation. And once you’re in it and once you’re committed, you’ve got to carry on. I think I have a bit of regret about that, but not about the moviemaking and filmmaking. I don’t have regrets about that. I just think that conceptually, we did it too soon.”
And while not Star Wars related, Kennedy also made it clear that she had “no regrets about” the widely-panned Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny “because Harrison wanted to do that more than anything.”
“He did not want Indy to end with the fourth movie. He wanted a chance at another, and we did that for him. I think that was the right thing to do. He wanted to do that movie. I don’t think Indy will ever be done, but I don’t think anybody is interested right now in exploring it. But these are timeless movies, and Indy will never be done.”
