Does Kathleen Kennedy Have Her Lucasfilm Successors Lined Up?
Evidence that Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy is leaving her position is piling up. First came a report from Matthew Belloni of Puck claiming that three sources informed him that Kathleen Kennedy had informed Disney that she would be retiring soon. While rumors of her exit – of her own accord or by parent company Disney finally firing her – have been swirling for years, this one gained so much traction because the major entertainment news publications all ran with it; Variety, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter shared the news, meaning this wasn’t just another wild rumor. Two days later, Kennedy talked to Deadline in an interview that was pitched as her dispelling false reports of her retirement; instead, she more or less confirmed it by dancing around the question and even giving a timeline similar to Belloni’s and admitting that she and Disney had been discussing her replacement. And that’s what the biggest takeaway is from a lengthy piece in The Hollywood Reporter about various upcoming successions in major studios and talent agencies. (It starts off kind of cool when they compare the situation to Game of Thrones and its palace intrigue, but it loses steam fast when you realize you have no idea who any of these people are or how they’d run these studios.) THR has heard from sources that Dave Filoni, Lucasfilm’s chief creative officer, and Carrie Beck, the studio’s production head, are the likely candidates to take over for Kathleen Kennedy when she leaves, which THR believes she is going to do when Bob Iger steps down as Disney’s CEO next year.
Even if you’ve never seen any of his Star Wars projects, you probably know who Dave Filoni is. He was the supervising director of the animated series The Clone Wars before becoming the co-creator and executive producer of Star Wars Rebels, its follow-up set during the early days of the Empire’s rule. Under Disney, Filoni became the co-showrunner of the Disney+ series The Mandalorian along with Jon Favreau, as well as the showrunner of Ahsoka, based on the character he created in The Clone Wars, the film that preceded the series. He’s also the co-writer and executive producer of The Mandalorian and Grogu, the upcoming Star Wars film based on The Mandalorian. Carrie Beck isn’t as well-known as Filoni, but she co-created Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars Resistance with him and was an executive producer on Star Wars: The Bad Batch and the final season of The Clone Wars. Like many other studios, according to the THR piece, Lucasfilm is looking to find its new leaders within instead of without, and if Filoni and Beck end up being the co-CEOs, they’ll be from the creative wing of the studio, which contrasts them with DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran; while Gunn is a creative, Safran is more business-minded.
What this means for Lucasfilm is unclear, but I doubt it’s anything good. Admittedly, I’m not overly familiar with Dave Filoni’s work, but what little I’ve seen hasn’t impressed me. I watched a little bit of The Clone Wars but gave up when it got too silly and kiddie-style for my taste. (I gather this means I wouldn’t like Resistance much, either.) The Mandalorian was decent for a while, but it dropped off a cliff after its second season. Ahsoka was terrible, an absolute chore to sit through. And I know even less about Carrie Beck’s work. Regardless, even if they were the best, most perfect people to lead Lucasfilm, it wouldn’t matter now. This is a point I make every time the idea of Kennedy leaving the studio comes up: nobody can fix Star Wars because it’s been thoroughly demolished, with the sequels and some of the shows not only trashing the original trilogy but invalidating important plot points and character arcs, ruining the best Star Wars there ever was – the only universally beloved part of the franchise – in a blatant attempt to make their lousy movies and the characters that populate them seem important. Once you’ve not only dishonored the past but destroyed it and, in some cases, made it disappear completely, you have nowhere to go. If Dave Filoni and Carrie Beck really are Kathleen Kennedy’s successors, their best bet is to collect their undoubtedly large paychecks for as long as they can and coast until the studio just collapses.
Let us know what you think of Dave Filoni and Carrie Beck taking over Lucasfilm from Kathleen Kennedy in the comments!
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