I can’t believe the Monday we’re having, but it looks like maybe a silver lining!
According to Pirates&Princesses:
Quietly things have been shifting at Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. One might say the mood is different in the house that George Lucas built. It started with the dramatic clean up of social media behavior by Lucasfilm employees. Then, despite the Herculean efforts it would take to get Indiana Jones 5 into production, everything was thrown at making the movie a reality. The head of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, began scheduling appearances at the production of the movie, along with her husband, Frank Marshal, in a way that isn’t often seen for executive producers. Next, the bad news for Star Wars and Disney+ began subtly leaking from Disney… almost certainly in a soft, coordinated manner.
Kennedy is in the final year of her contract with The Walt Disney Company for presiding over the studio largely all about Star Wars. Her tenure has been a bumpy one. While her immediate box office success with The Force Awakens and Rogue One was monumental, things quickly devolved afterwards from a financial position. Whereas other Disney properties grew in popularity and economic importance, Star Wars began to diminish with the release of The Last Jedi. It was a steady drop until The Mandalorian.
If you’ve been following Star Wars, you’ve probably read articles like the one above. You know that there are people who defend Kathleen Kennedy, and those who despise how she’s performed. But the tenuous relationship she’s had with Disney was ultimately frayed when Favreau demonstrated just how popular Star Wars can still be with The Mandalorian, and yet that was somewhat squandered with the mishandling of Gina Carano. Whatever your opinion of the actress, the way in which she was terminated from the company was a public relations nightmare.
