I guess that narcissists are always convinced that they are right, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Or maybe they just don't care what happens when they're wrong.
Kathleen Kennedy is head of the Lucasfilm division of Disney. What has she given us that is worth a damn?
The Willow series, an admittedly minor IP of Lucasfilm, was SO bad, that it was pulled from Disney+, because the cost of allowing it to stream, and paying the actors, was more than it would ever make in revenue, or increases in D+ subscribers.
Indiana Jones and the Insufferable Feminist has a reported production budget of $402 million. Worldwide box office is $384 million. When you consider that marketing was probably a $150 to $200 million expense, and that the studios get roughly half of the box office (the theaters get paid too), this film was a disaster.
And then there is Star Wars. This had been (past tense) the single most profitable franchise ever to come out of Hollywood. It has been driven into the ground and shot in the head by Kathleen Kennedy and Company.
If you doubt that, look at the in-theater reaction of Star Wars fans to the ending of The Rise of Skywalker. Despite that reaction (which was not limited to one theater) Kathleen Kennedy continues to try and push that line of films.
Star Wars decided that they were going to have a themed/role-playing hotel based on Star Wars. The Galactic Starcruiser. It was a complete failure. Galactic Starcruiser cost Disney millions. Actually that understates the cost, considerably.
Although some outlets have ballparked the Galactic Starcruiser’s costs past $1 billion, a more conservative estimate of $350 million by a former Imagineer seems more likely.
What did they get for that $350 million? Not much. The Galactic Starcruiser opened in March of 2022 and closed in September of 2023. 19 months was all they could get out of that investment. That comes to about 18.4 million dollars a month, not including running cost, if I read the numbers correctly. There were 100 rooms, going for about $3000 a night, if I read the number correctly. Even if I'm off by an order of magnitude, this was a disaster.
Then there are Disney+ Star Wars shows. I haven't seen any of them, aside from clips on YouTube, and reviews. The most recent one, Star Wars: The Acolyte was produced by Leslie Headland, former personal assistant to Harvey Weinstein, in which we are informed the the evil people in Star Wars (the Sith) are not evil, they are just misunderstood, and the good people (the Jedi) are not good, they are just cops. It hasn't been watched by very many people according to Nielsen ratings. It isn't that people hate it; they don't care.
In the face of ALL of that failure, most people would conclude that they are not suited for controlling that IP, and move on. But people in Hollywood are not like most people. They are convinced that they are right, and you are stupid, or evil, for daring to disagree with them.
This is the Snarky Jay video KATHLEEN KENNEDY: She WON'T RETIRE Until SHE WINS!
FWIW, Hollywood math:
ReplyDeleteTake the production budget.
Double it.
Because PR & advertising a film is generally equal to or greater than the production cost.
So for Indiana Jones & The Insufferable Feminist, that's $392M, + $392M, 0r $784M total cost.
And yes, the distribution deal sees the distributing theaters talk half the box office gate.
Which means IJ&TIF netted Disney $192M worldwide. So it lost them $592,000,000.
Of course, that was back when half a billion dollars loss on a single movie was considered a lot of money by most companies.
Bear in mind, woketarded Kathleen Kennedy alone has cost The Mouse somewhere between $5B and $10B dollars, with serial disasters that destroyed the Star Wars franchise, then the ongoing Marvel debacles, before trashing the Indiana Jones series.
A friend who worked for Amblin's front office back in the day cracked the code for me on woketard extraordinaire Kathleen Kennedy: she was originally Steven Spielberg's assistant. And she was inarguably and entirely horrible at that job. But she was a nice person, and he's a decent guy, so he didn't want to just fire her.
So instead, he made her an associate producer (which tells you all you need to know about Hollywood, when associate producer is an entry level job for unqualified midwits like Kennedy). And that was Spielberg's explanation, in person.
She's simply failed upwards ever since, and she moved to the Disney stable of retards with their acquisition of Lucasfilm, which got her away from ruining Spielberg's efforts, and grossed George Lucas a $6B paycheck.
Everybody is happy with that arrangement. Except the audience.
QED
The really big budgets probably don't get doubled by marketing, though most of the Marvel/Lucasfilm movies probably get about $150 to $200 million marketing. Which also includes translations into other languages (Hollywood has a term that doesn't quite mean marketing.)
DeleteI agree with your take on KK, except that would explain why Iger hasn't fired her. She has been around long enough to know where all the bodies are buried. That can't fire her without shooting themselves.