Sunday night the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held their 10th annual Governors Awards.  Kathleen Kennedy, along with her husband and production partner, Frank Marshall, received the Irving G Thalberg award.  Kennedy became the first woman to ever win this award, and the first person to receive it since Francis Ford Coppola in 2010.

The Thalberg award is awarded to “creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.”  Previous award winners include legendary names such as Walt Disney, Cecil B Demille, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and many others.

Kathleen’s Career

The Thalberg award sums up a producer’s lifetime body of work.  Any one saying Kennedy does not deserve this award does not know what they are talking about.  Looking back through her producer credits, many she shares with her Husband, Frank, it is a who’s who of all time great and classic movies of the past 40 years! ET, Indiana Jones, Gremlins, Goonies, Back to the Futures, The Color Purple, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park/World, and that is barely scratching the surface.

Kathleen Kennedy and Star Wars

Now let’s look at Star Wars.  Many are calling for her head and want her gone.  All of this hate comes from The Last Jedi.  Like that movie or not, she has done a great job despite a couple missteps.  When she became president of Lucasfilm, she did what everyone attempted to do – copy Marvel’s template.  Because Marvel was doing it in spades, everyone had to copy their hot hand.  For everyone but Marvel, that method has backfired.

The Force Awakens was a solid film.  Rogue One was an incredible hit and tops many fans’ list of the top Star Wars movies.  The Last Jedi divided fans, but it took a risk. It was new and untried.  Solo was a box office let down, but that came from a bad release date and poor marketing.  DVD sales are going very well and many talk about their enjoyment of Solo even if it has some issues here and there.  So far she is 3/4 at the worst.

Kathleen’s Future With Star Wars

Now look at the future Kennedy laid out for Star Wars.  We have The Mandalorian coming to the streaming service along with a series based on Cassian Andor from Rogue One.  We have Episode IX coming in a year, so we shall see how that one turns out.  We have a ‘series’ with well known show runners Benioff and Weiss coming after the saga concludes.  She is doing just fine leading Star Wars forward.  If we can just get the wannabe Avatar movies out of the way, December would belong to Star Wars, and life would be great!