Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy has screwed the pooch so badly; the Star Wars film franchise is even deader than we thought.
What was supposed to be a two-films-a-year franchise (like Disney’s faltering Marvel), has not released a film since 2019, and now we know that all those widely disliked (with a couple of exceptions) Star Wars streaming shows are not even cracking the charts. In fact, those billion-dollar shows with all that multinational Disney publicity muscle behind them are losing to three-decade-old reruns of NCIS and Seinfeld.
And now we’re learning that the upcoming Star Wars movies from Marvel chief Kevin Feige and Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins are not upcoming. Rather, they are doornail dead:
It’s not for want of trying. In December 2020, Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy announced that “Wonder Woman” helmer Patty Jenkins would direct the next “Star Wars” movie, the one-off adventure “Rogue Squadron.” But in September 2022, Disney pulled the title from its scheduled December 2023 release, and sources with knowledge of the production say it is no longer in active development at the studio. (A rep for Lucasfilm did not respond to a request for comment. In December, Jenkins said in a statement that she was still developing “Rogue Squadron,” but “I don’t know if it will happen or not.”)
Meanwhile, Variety has learned that a possible “Star Wars” feature produced by Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige is also no longer in active development at Lucasfilm.
This means that Patty Jenkins has lost both her franchises: Star Wars and Wonder Woman. But that is just how dreadful Wonder Woman 1984 was.
There’s still a rumbling about Star Wars-killer Rian Johnson bringing his woketardery back to the franchise, but I don’t believe it. There’s also talk of another woketard — Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi — writing and directing a Star Wars movie and also starring in it. Yeah, that kind of ego trip will save the franchise. Thor: Love and Thunder was Waititi’s Wonder Woman 1984/The Last Jedi. A franchise killer. He turned Thor into an apron-wearing girl. So I doubt this, as well.
Speaking of girls…
….sources say the studio is committed to a “Star Wars” movie from director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a two-time Oscar-winning documentarian (“Saving Face,” “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness”), who made her live-action narrative debut with two episodes of 2022’s “Ms. Marvel” for Disney+. Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen”) and Justin Britt-Gibson (“Counterpart”) were attached in October to write the script for that movie.
Oh, yeah…. Movie bliss… Let’s bring together the geniuses behind woke Ms. Marvel, which no one liked, and woke Watchmen, which no one liked.
Even with the groomers at Disney looking to spin this five-alarm disaster into something—anything!— positive, the soonest the spin-meisters can promise a movie is 2025.
That’s six years—six!—after The Rise of Skywalker disappointed fans and the box office.
Does anyone with half-of-a-wit think Kathleen Kennedy would still be in that job if she were a guy?
Star Wars is the perfect example of what happens when you put identity over merit. Kennedy did have a track record. So I get why they gave her the job. But she has single-handedly annihilated the most bulletproof film franchise (see: Prequels, The) in movie history. So why is she still in that job after more than five years of failure? Only one reason: ladyparts.
And you can see why Feige dropped out. With his Marvel franchise on the woke skids, his primary job requires all his attention.
When Disney finally concedes and hands the franchise over to white guy Jon Favreau, I’m going to point and laugh until I fall out of my chair.
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