With the immediate future of the saga secure and a slew of big screen projects working their way towards cinemas around the world, it’s more important than ever to not only keep the loyal fanbase that has supported the saga for almost 50 years engaged going into the future, but also bring in new fans wherever possible. That’s a task that is prominent on Kathleen Kennedy’s mind, as she explains to Deadline.
DEADLINE: How daunting is it to run a company based on beloved and iconic IP? What has been the most challenging thing about running Lucasfilm when fans of the original trilogy measure everything against it and don’t see the business need of broadening the franchise when Disney paid so much for it?
KENNEDY: It is something I think about all the time. It’s fascinating to think about how you sustain a brand, especially Star Wars, which is just about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. And so to analyze and understand what was inspiring George when he created Star Wars, when he was still looking at Saturday matinees and Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and those are things of the past and politically what he was reflecting in his stories. Because Star Wars has always had a kind of world building, and it reflects a certain amount of our society. The world, needless to say, is changing by the second, and consequently, the audience has changed dramatically. How they consume things. We’re seeing this reflected in the health of the movie business, and what it really means for streaming and what are all these other platforms that may be on the horizon. You’re trying to look forward. And at the same time, you’re trying to create stories that feel familiar. So you’re moving into the future, but you’re maintaining a sense of familiarity. I think that’s the hardest balance.
Then when you have a brand that’s this expansive, you’re also — and this is something we work very hard at — you try to find different entry points for different generations because that’s what Star Wars has always been. It’s a very generational brand, and we want to sustain that, and we work hard to sustain that. So George gave us the gift of storytelling being across lots of different genres, and that gives us a lot of opportunity to try things. What we’ve really enjoyed about the streaming space is we’ve been able to experiment. It’s harder to do that in the movie space. And now I think that that’s why it feels so good to be able to move into a Mandalorian movie as we’re coming off of three seasons of a very successful show. We’ve actually built an audience for that, and we gave the young audience an opportunity to enter Star Wars at a different place and not feel like you have to have seen everything. It can become their Star Wars. And that, I think is, is the fun storytelling challenge.
it’s a topic we touch upon regularly on Making Tracks, and we will again when episode 218 lands on Fantha tracks radio next Tuesday.
