Posted on 06/26/2018 10:44:50 AM PDT by servo1969
If you don't want to watch, here's the quick written version:
Disney staged a big "secret" conference call with ranking people in the Star Wars division. Security guards were posted outside the doors at offices to prevent eavesdropping. Pixar and Marvel representatives were able to listen in on the call, but not speak on it. Apparently this was allowed to get feedback, I guess at a later point, about the Star Wars situation.
Disney's head Bob Iger wants to fire Kathleen Kennedy, but there's a problem: No one they're willing to offer the job to is willing to take it. JJ Abrams (Randolph reports) was offered the job, but turned it down flat. "Several" were approached.
One person that's brought up as a possible replacement for Kennedy, Dave Filloni, isn't being considered for the job by Iger, I guess because he hasn't run anything big like a studio.
Randolph says (speculating, I think) that no one wants the job because the Lucasfilm team is divided between old-guard Star Wars people and Kennedy's handpicked loyalists.
I would speculate myself that, assuming this claim that no one wants the job is true, it's because the brand is broken, and people know that, and it's a no-win situation: Everyone seems to think that Star Wars is supposed to make money automatically. That's no longer true post-Solo, but people still think that, so any head of Lucasfilm is in a situation where the best they can do is meet expectations (make money), and the worst they can do is fail spectacularly.
There's no upside. Well, except a huge pile of money, but I imagine the people being approached are already getting huge piles of money from other ventures with more of an upside as far as their reputations.
So no big-name person would want to walk into that situation. Smaller names would take that chance, but apparently Disney hasn't gotten desperate enough to offer it to a smaller name. Yet.
Randolph says that Disney feels that Star Wars is too targeted to "older SJWs," instead of its traditional fan base of men, and this is also hurting Star Wars in its merchandise sales, as "older SJWs" don't really buy movie tickets and certainly don't spend a lot of money on Milennium Falcon playsets.
She also reports that all the Star Wars "anthology" movies are indeed on hold as Disney tries to figure this out, except maybe for one: The Obi-Wan movie, which Disney thinks it should have made instead of Star Wars. However, while this movie is not officially on hold, it's also not on the front-burner, either.
Lastly, while "Episode IX" is still on (it's already started filming), it's "too late for any major course corrections." Kathleen Kennedy has ceded all creative control to director J.J. Abrams, maybe to spare herself further blame, maybe because she wants to just sit this one out, or who knows, maybe because Disney wants the ball in someone else's hands.
One point she alludes to, which she made before: She thinks that Star Wars never appealed to Kathleen Kennedy. Kathleen Kennedy didn't like the franchise, because it was, indeed, a boys' adventure franchise.
Instead of making a boys' adventure franchise she didn't get and didn't like, she made it into something she could like: a girls' empowerment fantasy.
This kind of sums up the problem with Social Justice Warriors taking over male-skewing sections of pop culture: They just don't like it. They never did like it. Some of them even feel that these parts of pop culture encourage "toxic masculinity," and therefore are evil.
And therefore must be subverted and remade into something they never were before.
So you... put multimillion dollar companies into the hands of people who don't like the product those companies sell and in fact might even hate?
Well, good luck with that, I guess.
Doubling Down and Redoubling Down: Apparently an official employee of Lucasfilm, writing for the "official" StarWars.com website, has decided to inform people that they are not "customers" of Lucasfilm and Lucasfilm owes them nothing at all, not even polite treatment.
She seems to be echoing Kathleen Kennedy, who has previously declared that she owes nothing to the male fans of Star Wars (who, let's face it, have maintained the value of the franchise for 40+ years):
"I have a responsibility to the company that I work with. I don't feel that I have a responsibility to cater in some way. I would never just seize on saying, 'Well, this is a franchise that's appealed primarily to men for many, many years, and therefore I owe men something.'"
Yes... yes... reach out with your Hatred... all is proceeding precisely as I envisioned...
And actually, being boozed/drugged up is probably the only way anyone is gonna enjoy watching this.
Who cares what his young aspirations are, now that we know how it turns out?
-PJ
13 year old play with stuff.
Adults collect them. May buy some for play, but usually that is always separate from their collections.
It’s a pity being female is what they focus on. Talent and doing a good job is meaningless to these people. Destroy everything that people love and enjoy, the democrats.
The Disney Kennedy and the Maryland Kennedy
are two different individuals. Kathleen Kennedy (of the Mass. Kennedy clan) was Lt. Gov. of Maryland.
She ran for Gov. and was soundly trounced by her
Republican opponent. Even Maryland Dems didn't like her!
Looky! Four feckless 0bamas!
George Lucas must be on lithium by now. One minute he’s laughing hysterically and crying the next.
So much stupid, so little time.
Where are their pink hats?
Just give it to the guy who makes all the Marvel movies.
The four Disney Star Wars have done $4.5 billion in global box office. And that doesnt count theme parks, licensing, home video and all those other ancillary revenue streams Disney is expert at maximizing. Theyre not sweating that Solo has only done $350 million internationally any more than they worried when the first Captain America movie only did that much.
"Mesa Darth Binks. Welcome to da Dork Side."
Hahaha ... guess I missed out on something not watching the simpsons...
Bkmk
I agree that episode IX is hopeless. The only way they could possibly salvage it is having Luke Skywalker wake up and say “I had a horrible vision that I had given up and the First Order completely crushed the resistance!” and start over.
So Kathleen Kennedy did kill the franchise. It’s dead now.
You’d think that at least one woman in that picture might have a little introspect and afterthought about being gender haters. Also, they are all that evil color...”white”.
Funny how so many women, and people of color are so quick to forget what the word EQUALITY means.
The reason why white men are so successful, is because they are generally not that F’n stupid.
To Disney: $$$$$$
To fans: Characters they liked doing really cool things, even the bad guys.
Remember PJ, you take away reason and accountability, and THEN YOU’VE CAPTURED THE ESSENCE OF FEMININITY.
Ergo, she didn’t fail. The movie was great. It was the MEN WHO WERE HER CUSTOMERS that failed.
Why would you trust something that valuable to someone other than a complete Star Wars fanatic?
Iger did that, I think.
I love Rifftracks.
The streaming live events are about the only time I go a theater.
I heard that George Lucas also played a role in the decision to nominate her as the succeeding head of Lucasfilm. If true, that just makes him even MORE contemptible. It’s already bad enough that he pretty much sold Star Wars to buy his way out of taxes (and taxes he practically lobbied for BTW), but deliberately allowing a person who doesn’t even make it a secret that she hated Star Wars?! Seriously, allowing someone who at least has a healthy respect for Star Wars, if not a fanatic, would have been far healthier for the franchise right now than one who truly hated it.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if Iger also played a role in the travesty of hiring her. He’s always been the type to make his decisions purely on political grounds instead of whether it actually makes a profit. He’s even worse than Eisner ever was (as bad as Eisner was, at least HE tried to focus on whether the company was actually making a profit in its decisions instead of trying to turn it into a Liberal SJW factory regardless of what customers think, which is far more than what can be said of Iger or even Katzenberg.).
Not sure I agree with the idea that femininity requires taking away reason and accountability, though. I know plenty of females, who actually ARE feminine I should add, who definitely have a lot of sound reasoning and even accountability. Like, for example, Mallory Millet, or Phyllis Schlafly. Ironically, a lot of the ones who seem to take away reason and accountability seemed more masculine in demeanor than truly feminine, like Betty Friedan, or Gloria Steinem, or Kate Millet, or Simone de Beauvoir.
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