Kathleen Kennedy Sees Trolls. Affleck and Damon See the Medium.
Kennedy blamed "a small percentage of fans" for Star Wars failures while producing $200M theatrical releases for a medium that no longer commands attention. Medium-literate executives build different
Last week, Kathleen Kennedy gave Deadline her exit interview after fourteen years running Lucasfilm. When asked about the lows of her Star Wars experience, Kennedy blamed “a very, very small percentage of the fan base that has enormous expectations and basically they want to continue to see pretty much the same thing.” She described filmmakers getting “spooked by online negativity.” She also warned incoming directors—especially women—about “a very small group of people, with loud megaphones.” She invoked “this weird world of where bots can affect things.”
All of Kennedy’s observations inadvertently revealed something more fundamental than toxic fandom: medium illiteracy.
Kennedy ran Lucasfilm when Disney acquired Maker Studios for $675 million in 2014. That deal collapsed because Disney executives saw YouTube “as a marketing and distribution engine for its existing assets” rather than a distinct creative medium. Disney wrote the deal off entirely by 2017.
She ran Lucasfilm while Disney Interactive Studios shuttered in 2014 because, as one observer noted, “there wasn’t really much—if any—institutional knowledge regarding video games there.” She oversaw theatrical releases that cost $200 million and took years to produce while competing against creators who ship weekly, spend thousands, and build direct relationships with audiences.
The trolls are not the issue. The issue is that even after streaming took off, Kennedy failed to grasp or embrace the new constraints of the new medium, then blamed audiences for not showing up.
