Glad I’m not a Kennedy
There’s good news for Star Wars fans, writes Ryan Faughnder. Characters created in the recent trilogy won’t be abandoned.
The woman who’s future-proofing Star Wars
Cover: The Poet’s Bridge during Pukekura Park’s Festival of Lights in New Plymouth.
Rob Bredow, head of Lucasfilm’s visual effects division, Industrial Light & Magic, came to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy early last year with a bold idea for filming Jon Favreau’s upcoming TV series,
The Mandalorian.
The film-makers wanted to use what they’d been calling the ‘‘stage of the future’’: a set wrapped in LED screens to create the virtual backgrounds for the show.
The company had used the technique previously to create the Millennium Falcon’s Kessel Run in Solo: A Star Wars Story but never at the scale Bredow was proposing.
Kennedy, however, recalled her days working on Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, which was green-lighted before they were even certain that visual effects technology could create a believable tyrannosaurus rex.
‘‘She said, ‘there have been a few times in my career where there have been these kinds of moments. Go for it’,’’ Bredow recalled in the cafeteria of Lucasfilm’s San Francisco headquarters.
‘‘She, and we, are looking for those opportunities to break new ground.’’
By all accounts, the gamble on The
Mandalorian has paid off for Lucasfilm since it debuted to an enthusiastic response on streaming service Disney+ in November. Viewers have obsessed online about the show’s introduction of so-called Baby Yoda, an infant from the same species as the Jedi master.
The series launched ahead of Star Wars: The
Rise of Skywalker, the ninth and final film in the space opera series dubbed the Skywalker saga, which opened Thursday.
Directed by J J Abrams, the film was expected to rake it in at the box office this weekend – about US$200 million ($304m) in the United States and Canada alone.
After The Rise of Skywalker, Kennedy, 66, faces what might be her most daunting challenge since George Lucas handpicked her to shepherd his creation seven years ago: figuring out what’s next for what is probably pop culture’s most closely critiqued franchise.
Fans have been parsing the series’ creative choices since Star Wars debuted in 1977
(Jar Jar Binks, anyone?), and the scrutiny has only intensified since Disney bought Lucasfilm for US$4 billion, shortly after Kennedy joined.
Star Wars is a major pillar in Disney’s streaming push with Disney+, which is Walt Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger’s top priority.
‘‘Obviously, that’s what we’ve been spending so much time talking about, and it’s a really important transition for Star Wars,’’ Kennedy said. ‘‘What we’ve been focused on these last five or six years is finishing that family saga around the Skywalkers. Now is the time to start thinking about how to segue into something new and different.’’
Kennedy’s tenure hasn’t been without setbacks. While the first four Star Wars films in the Disney era combined for nearly $5b at the global box office, last year’s Solo was a commercial disappointment, after a fraught production in which the studio replaced the directors during shooting. Iger openly blamed the lacklustre performance on releasing too many Star Wars movies too quickly.
The company has announced films with intriguing film-makers attached, only to later part ways with them. Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow was replaced with Abrams for
The Rise of Skywalker after Trevorrow struggled to develop a script that satisfied the studio. Most recently, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D B Weiss dropped a planned Star
Wars trilogy after they signed a deal with Netflix. But Kennedy views any negative conclusions drawn from the director churn as exaggerated.
‘‘Nobody in our business develops something with one person, that’s it, and everything goes perfectly,’’ she said.
‘‘That’s a fairly common part of the process. We fall under incredible scrutiny because it’s Star
Wars. Because of the quality I’m striving for, I’m reaching out to top talent, and vice versa.’’
Despite some difficulties, the franchise has been massively lucrative for Disney.
‘‘They’ve had three, and soon to be four, very successful movies, and one not-so successful movie,’’ said Doug Creutz, an entertainment and media analyst at Cowen & Co. ‘‘The Mandalorian has been a very successful lead programme for Disney+, and they’ve integrated Star Wars into the theme parks. That said, it hasn’t been as smooth a ride as it has been for Marvel.’’
During production of The Rise of Skywalker,
Kennedy asked Iger if he was comfortable taking a ‘‘pause’’ on Star Wars films. Iger agreed to pump the brakes to give Lucasfilm more time to develop new movies. The company had been delivering at least one Star Wars film a year since 2015, whereas
Lucas himself had waited at least three years between films.
‘‘We’re literally making this up from whole cloth and bringing in film-makers to find what these stories might be,’’ Kennedy said. ‘‘It can take a while before you find what direction you might want to go. We need the time to do that.’’
The next Star Wars film is expected to arrive in 2022, and that’s essentially all that’s known about it. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has an idea for a Star Wars movie, but it’s in the early stages, according to Kennedy. Rian Johnson, who wrote and directed The Last Jedi, is also developing more Star Wars films.
Kennedy said she plans to make key decisions about the direction of the franchise in the coming weeks. But some things she already knows.
While the Skywalker saga is ending, the company won’t abandon the characters created in the most recent trilogy. And the plan is to move beyond trilogies, which can be restricting.
‘‘I think it gives us a more open-ended view of storytelling and doesn’t lock us into this three-act structure,’’ she said. ‘‘We’re not going to have some finite number and fit it into a box. We’re really going to let the story dictate that.’’
Branching out creatively is a logical move for Kennedy, who made a name for herself producing such blockbusters as ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park.
Raised in Redding, California, she studied film and telecommunications at San Diego State University. After she saw Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977, she decided to pursue a career in movies.
She landed her first job in film as a production assistant to John Milius, and met Spielberg when they were making 1941, which Spielberg directed.
Kennedy started working for Spielberg as he was gearing up for the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark, during which she also met Lucas.
With Spielberg and her future husband, Frank Marshall, she founded Amblin Entertainment in 1981, where she would produce movies such as The Color Purple. About a decade later, she and Marshall founded their own firm, the Kennedy/ Marshall Co.
Kennedy’s already shining career took a dramatic turn in 2012, when friend Lucas named her co-chair of Lucasfilm, making her custodian of his legacy.
The job came with early challenges. Lucas had spoken with Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford about continuing the Star Wars saga. But the firm, which had largely been focused on licensing and animation, needed to build a production and development team.
Then, just four months after Kennedy got the job, Lucas sold to Disney. While Kennedy was unexpectedly in the position of managing that transition, the new ownership was also an opportunity.
‘‘The level of support [from Disney] was extraordinary,’’ she said. ‘‘It just takes some time to get to know people, and who’s doing what. But now it’s quite streamlined, and everybody works together really, really well.’’
Kennedy came with a stable of existing Lucasfilm talent to build from, including Dave Filoni, who had trained under Lucas on projects including the Clone Wars TV series and 2008 movie. Filoni told her he was interested in learning to direct live-action. So Kennedy, he said, set up a programme for him to shadow directors, including Abrams and Johnson.
‘‘I think it says a lot about how she looks at a long game and works patiently to achieve goals and find success, not just for the projects, but for people as well,’’ said Filoni, who is executive producer and a director of The Mandalorian.
The pressure to deliver for fans with the first
Star Wars film under Disney was immense. Lucas, who was stung by the poor reception of his Star Wars prequels, was disappointed when Kennedy screened The Force Awakens for him. He complained there was ‘‘nothing new’’ in the movie, according to Iger’s recent book The Ride of a
Lifetime. Nonetheless, the film was a critical and commercial success, grossing more than US$2b. Debates over the franchise persisted. The Last
Jedi, for example, was criticised in some circles for going too far in subverting Star Wars tropes. Kennedy says the company heeds feedback from
Star Wars fans. For example, Lucasfilm decided to revive The Clone Wars TV series for Disney+, after a prolonged campaign by viewers.
‘‘It does matter what they say and what they care about,’’ Kennedy said. ‘‘All of those things play a role in our decision-making.’’
Aside from films, Lucasfilm has ample Star
Wars material in the works, especially for Disney+. The studio is working on shows starring Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Diego Luna as his rebel spy character from Rogue One.
And the possibilities extend beyond Star Wars.
Solo co-writer Jonathan Kasdan has completed a pilot script for a series based on the cult classic
Willow. Kennedy is pushing for new material. While Lucasfilm was shooting The Rise of
Skywalker, Michelle Rejwan went to a London bookshop and picked up the fantasy novel Children
of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. She recommended it to Kennedy, who was enchanted by the story and thought the themes echoed those of Star Wars. She found out the rights to the book were owned by Fox, which Disney was in the process of absorbing. She called Fox film executive Emma Watts and asked if Lucasfilm could codevelop a film based on the property.
But what makes a new Lucasfilm franchise if it has nothing to do with Star Wars? That’s another question Kennedy will grapple with as she considers the company’s future. She compares the process to when she sat down with Spielberg and Marshall to determine the creative identity of Amblin.
‘‘I’m very excited at the possibility of being able to do things that expand our portfolio a little bit,’’ she said. ‘‘You realise there’s so much potential to do some pretty great things, and to expand beyond just Star Wars is pretty exciting to think about.’’
‘‘There’s so much potential to do some pretty great things, and to expand beyond just Star Wars is pretty exciting to think about.’’
Kathleen Kennedy