Talking About 'Star Wars': Why would Disney trust Kathleen Kennedy after the way the recent Star Wars movies were received?


Someone on Quora asks:

Why would Disney trust Kathleen Kennedy after the way the recent Star Wars movies were received?

My reply:

Well, it would be most ungracious if Bob Iger and Alan Horn fire Kathleen Kennedy after producing three of four financially successful films in a series that its creator, George Lucas, had once declared would consist only of the six “Tragedy of Darth Vader” Episodes (and, later, those six films plus the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series).
As of this writing, the first two installments of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy (Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi) have earned $$3.4 billion worldwide. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, earned $1.056 billion. The only underperformer in the new post-George Lucas “era of Disney” Lucasfilm slate of movies in the Star Wars franchise is Solo: A Star Wars Story, which made “only” $392 million.
Solo’s box office flop was a given, at least in hindsight, considering that it followed the release of The Last Jedi by a timespan of five months. It was also hampered by the studio’s poor choice in hiring Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, their subsequent firing, and the replacement of the directing duo with Ron Howard. And, to add more obstacles to the film’s success at the box office, it was scheduled close to the release of another major Disney-owned studio’s highly anticipated Avengers movie.
Since December of 2015, Lucasfilm has released four Star Wars films, and only one really failed to be a blockbuster.
So much for your premise of “the way the recent Star Wars movies were received.”
I find this question to be rather insulting since Kathleen Kennedy has been in the film business since the 1980s and is responsible for producing some of the most successful movies in American pop culture history. It reflects a sexist, small-minded belief that she is solely responsible for the supposed decline of Star Wars as a franchise, which is a fantasy created and disseminated by a small but very vocal minority of persons who call themselves “true Star Wars fans.”

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