After greater than 13 years on the helm of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from the “Star Wars” manufacturing facility based by George Lucas.
The Walt Disney Co introduced Thursday that it’ll now flip to Dave Filoni to steer “Star Wars” into its sixth decade and past. Filoni, who served because the chief business officer of Lucasfilm, and Lynwen Brennan, president and basic supervisor of Lucasfilm’s companies, will inherit the mantle of one of many motion pictures’ marquee franchises.
Kennedy, Lucas’ handpicked successor, had presided over the ever-expanding science-fiction world of “Star Wars” since Disney acquired it in 2012. She oversaw a extremely profitable however typically contentious interval in “Star Wars” historical past that yielded a blockbuster trilogy and acclaimed streaming spinoffs akin to “The Mandalorian” and “Andor,” but discovered growing frustration from longtime followers.
Under Kennedy’s stewardship, Lucasfilm amassed greater than $5.6 billion in field workplace and helped set up Disney+ as a streaming vacation spot — achievements that simply validated the $4.05 billion Disney plunked down for the corporate. But Kennedy additionally struggled to ship the big-screen magic that Lucas captured within the authentic trilogy from the late Nineteen Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties, and her relationship with “Star Wars” loyalists turned a saga of its personal.
While Filoni and Brennan will share management, Brennan is taken into account the extra financially oriented government. Filoni can have the inventive reins. He’s established himself virtually totally on the small display, coming into the franchise with the animated sequence “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and creating the tepidly acquired Disney+ sequence “Ahsoka.” Filoni, who first collaborated with Lucas on “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” has additionally been an government producer on “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Skeleton Crew.”
Before becoming a member of Lucasfilm, Kennedy was one in all Hollywood’s most profitable producers ever. In 1981, she co-founded Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg and her eventual husband, Frank Marshall. She produced “E.T.,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Jurassic Park” and the “Back to the Future” trilogy.
At Lucasfilm, her greatest hit got here firstly, with 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” The J.J. Abrams-directed movie grossed greater than $2 billion worldwide. But the following installment, Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi” (2017), was bitterly divisive. The third movie, Abrams’ “The Rise of Skywalker” (2019), was broadly panned by critics and followers, alike.
After “The Rise of Skywalker,” “Star Wars” went darkish on the large display regardless of a litany of introduced tasks. The dry spell is about to be damaged in May by Jon Favreau’s “The Mandalorian & Grogu.” The intervening years have been marked by streaming successes in “The Mandalorian” and “Andor,” however the way forward for “Star Wars” has felt more and more unsure.
Struggles over tone and imaginative and prescient have been frequent. The 2018 Han Solo spinoff “Solo: A Star Wars Story” noticed its administrators, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, fired throughout manufacturing and changed by Ron Howard. Most discovered the mixed-and-matched outcome blandly disappointing.
More lately, Adam Driver, who performed Kylo Ren/Ben Solo in the newest “Star Wars” trilogy,” divulged to The Associated Press final yr that he and Steven Soderbergh had developed a Ben Solo movie with Kennedy and Lucasfilm’s assist for 2 years earlier than Disney chief Bob Iger nixed it. Fans have been so irate {that a} airplane was flown over Disney’s Burbank studios with a banner studying “Save ‘The Hunt for Ben Solo.’”
Instead, the one “Star Wars” film of Kennedy’s stewardship to win widespread and prevailing approval from followers was arguably 2016’s “Rogue One.” Gareth Edwards’ spinoff was additionally a troubled manufacturing, resulting in Tony Gilroy, eventual creator of “Andor,” overseeing reshoots. Yet regardless of that, “Rogue One” — going down inside “Star Wars” however outdoors of the principle Jedi storyline — could be the one movie of Kennedy’s “Star Wars” reign that managed to each keep true to the area odyssey’s tone and to interrupt new floor.
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