TheQuartering [1/4/2020]
You just hate to see it… Wait… no, you don’t. I loved the Mandalorian and I love that it’s replacing Galaxy’s Edge! I may actually go now!
According to Pirates & Princesses:
The info is coming out of Lucasfilm fast and furious, and particularly from the Kathleen Kennedy side of things. I’ll be honest, I’ve got too many articles to write at the moment and too much stuff to corroborate to keep up. I think the amount of info being “leaked” is indicative of the Kathleen side knowing that they’ve lost. Clearly the schism has turned into something else entirely, where instead of there being two factions, there are the employees and loyalists at Lucasfilm that bought into Kathy’s vision and have now lost completely the confidence of Disney.
Essentially, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have formed a partnership which is buoyed by Bob Iger and (ostensibly) by Bob Chapek. What they’re doing is ingenious — they’re building the Star Wars Streaming and Cinematic Universe that follows the MCU blueprint. The difference is they’re doing it with streaming series that give them significantly more screen time to tell stories. Their plan is to revere George Lucas, restore the original characters back to glory, tell an engaging saga that crescendos with a battle against Thrawn, all while preparing to fix the problems of the sequel trilogy. Eventually, they’d like to do a trilogy that chronologically follows the sequel trilogy and features Grogu. I assume that means the next trilogy would be set many decades into the future in the franchise’s fictional timeline.
While that is going on (and that’s where the budget is), Kathleen gets some side projects with small budgets to do whatever zany stuff she wants. But they have to be kept away from the Star Wars Streaming and Cinematic Universe… they don’t touch. She gets to do Ghostbusters 2016 projects while Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni get MCU-sized projects and budgets that she can’t meddle with. You see, Favreau and Filoni report directly to Iger – Kennedy gets no say on anything they’re doing, even though she can provide “notes”.
Kennedy’s Lucasfilm has done everything in its power to go a certain direction. Favreau and Filoni are going a different way. The different way is winning, and it’s winning to such a degree that the diehards who can’t adjust are out there making tons of noise while their ship sinks. Many of them don’t realize their days are numbered. Wonder if Hidalgo realizes the future of Star Wars looks completely the opposite of what he wants?