Interesting news comes via The Hollywood Reporter regarding the timing of the next big Star Wars movie announcement. While discussing the future movements of Kathleen Kennedy, the January announcement date is mentioned, specifically the 2022 film which will Rian Johnson won’t be directing.
Iger already noted a Star Wars film “hiatus” in a Nov. 7 earnings call. In September, he told The New York Times that Disney “put a little bit too much in the marketplace too fast.” (Was he the one who pushed to hurry out Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018 despite Kennedy’s misgivings? Well, yes.)
And THR hypothesize further regarding Kennedy’s role.
Sources say Kennedy has a film on deck for 2022, but not the one being developed by The Last Jedi filmmaker Rian Johnson. (No announcement is planned until January.) Kennedy’s contract is up in 2021, so whether she will be on the job when this film is completed is not clear. Kennedy insists she’s enjoyed running Lucasfilm, but in some ways it’s hard to see how. She has had one of the hardest jobs in Hollywood: inventing stories under a white-hot spotlight and dealing in a universe where rabid fans have plenty of ideas, mostly about what they don’t want. And she was picked by Lucas before he sold to Disney, not Iger. It’s not hard to imagine that Iger would like to install his own choice to head this bauble that cost $4 billion and has generated some headaches since. It’s also not hard to imagine that Iger has not enjoyed the negative noise around the franchise, despite the nearly $5 billion in global box office from Disney’s four installments since 2015.
