Last month there was a big bruh-ha-ha in Hollywood over Kathleen Kennedy (in charge of the Star Wars franchise), with rumors of her finally quitting.
Kathleen Kennedy is 71, I think.
And a few months ago even the shills at The Hollywood Reporter were lamenting how these boomers gatekeeping the studios refuse to let go of power and make way for younger, more creative talent who are more in touch with what audiences want and not just do safe, plain vanilla, corporate committee-approved reboots and audience nostalgia grifts.
The result is one bomb after another.
Even with Disney’s shady accounting gimmicks via Shifty the CPA doing his thing in the back room, and with one or two fan service exceptions, they are churning out duds.
I don’t know what kind of leverage she has over the industry.
But if I had to speculate?
I wouldn’t be shocked if she has “Epstein-like” dirt on a lot of people. Including some big Disney investors who aren’t calling for her head. Really, there is no other explanation at this point. Because financially it makes zero sense to keep someone like Kennedy in charge. Especially since she has mostly only failed upwards for 10 straight years.
Anyway, she also said something else about the Star Wars brand she almost single-handedly has ganked that’s worth mentioning:
“… there were a lot of companies that were in place who frankly didn’t initially feel that Star Wars was for girls. And when you have a company situation where between Lucasfilm and Disney, we were all looking at this situation saying, ‘No, with Star Wars we have to change this. We have to make sure that we create products that are in a sense appealing to both boys and girls.’ What’s wrong with that?”
What’s wrong with that is it violates the #1 rule of marketing:
i.e., Sell to buyers.
What works to sell buyers almost always means deliberately repelling those who are not buyers. The reverse is also true, as Disney investors have been seeing, in real time, going on 10 years straight now.
I came of age when the original trilogy was still playing in theaters.
And it was boys they sold to, marketed to, catered to, created toys to appeal to… and who turned it into possibly the biggest and most successful Hollywood brand to ever have existed. It worked so well that after the original Star Wars came out, Hollywood producers would even joke they were no longer in the movie business, they were in the George Lucas business, as he had amassed so much power and influence and money.
And during that time, girls didn’t buy the toys and merchandise, boys did.
There were and still are obviously nerd girls who love Star Wars.
Not to mention half naked, cosplayers haunting Star Wars conventions.
But there has never been sufficient numbers of them with sufficient passion for actually BUYING Star Wars toys and merchandise like boys always have, to grow it to what it became before Disney got its hands on it. Yes, I know there are lots of Star Wars fangirls. But if they were the ones doing all the BUYING, then the franchise would be a lot more prosperous, and thriving like never before, instead of flopping, failing, and falling.
I say that for the dorks who will say “But AI says!”
If you want to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears and box office gross, be my guest.
But Bud Light, Gillette, Dungeons & Dragons, and now Disney/Marvel/Star Wars:
These companies violating this simple rule don’t seem to learn.
And even if they do, it’s hard to fully come back from in sales.
And so it goes.
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Ben Settle
