Rumors Swirl: Kathleen Kennedy Was Summoned Into Bob Iger's Office and Read the Riot Act

Some background:

"Dicktor Van Doomcock" (possibly a pseudonym) and Kamran Pasha have previously claimed, citing sources in Disney, that Disney is planning to get rid of Kathleen Kennedy via a "Viking funeral" at the next Disney celebration (in May). At the Disney celebration, the company will praise her for her long history of fetching coffee for talented men who produced huge hits, and then overseeing, on her own, one chaotic, hugely expensive production after another with dramatic firings and reshoots and widespread fan alienation and disappointing box office returns and ultimately killing the Star Wars brand under piles of #Girlboss political messaging.

What a career!

Then she would soon after announce her own decision, which she totally decided of her own volition (wink), to leave Disney to pursue her own artistic ambitious. Spoiler, none of her ambitious are artistic. They all have to do with politics, feminist spite, and ego.

Disney also struck some deal with her to co-produce four films with her, per this story. (Not Star Wars or LucasFilm properties! Her own stupid #girlpower movies.)

And that would be, as they say in Hollywood, a wrap for Kathleen Kennedy's mismanagement of LucasFilm.

It was previously claimed that while she agreed to this choreographed exit, she has lately been attempting to weasel her way out of it, and get the Viking tribute part of the funeral without the funeral -- she wants to stay at Lucasfilm and continue ruining Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

But Chapek and then Iger remained firm on the "funeral" part of the plan, and told her no, she had to go as previously agreed.

In the meantime, Disney has cancelled plans for an Indiana Jones tv show for Disney+, which would have, one guesses, starred Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the new improved female "Indiana Jones."

Reportedly, Disney just fired hack writer Damon Lindelof, who was talking to the press about the new Star Wars script he was writing, and fired his writing partner, whose name escapes me. Iger (or another chieftain at Disney) told him he had no deal and that he should stop claiming he was writing a Star Wars script. This is in the context of, supposedly, Chapek and then Iger telling Kennedy she no longer had any power to start any productions without their permission, but Kennedy supposedly blowing this off and making deals behind their backs anyway.

Last week, Iger -- under pressure from Nelson Peltz, who may wind up evicting Iger's yes-men board if Iger doesn't stop losing investors money -- fired an "untouchable" diversity executive at Disney, Victoria Alonso, and kicked her ass out with either no payout or a small enough payout that she doesn't mind forfeiting it by threatening a lawsuit against Disney.

That brings us to the new news. Both Dicktor Van Doomcock (possibly not his real name) and Kamran Pasha have sources who are telling substantially the same story, with different levels of detail, about a meeting between Iger and Kennedy this past week. However, the confirmations are not so airtight that they're willing to say that this information is actually confirmed. It's still "rumor," albeit rumor that is more credible than most.

In this video, they disclose the following new claims:

The meeting was a locked-door office confrontation.

Kathleen Kennedy was "shellacked" by the meeting.

Iger told Kathleen Kennedy that Indiana Jones was "a mess" and wanted it straightened out, particularly the ending.

The reason that both Von Doomcock's and Pasha's sources know about this, supposedly, is that she was so angry that she's been ranting about the meeting around the offices, so many people know about it.

Iger told Kennedy that Indiana Jones had to be profitable -- no "just break even" would be accepted. He told her the movie had to make at least $900 million, or Kennedy will not be allowed to just retire via the "Viking Funeral" plan, but will instead be publicly fired and "publicly shamed."

The implication is that they will revoke the planned retirement bonus they were planning to pay her.

Kathleen Kennedy, who has been reshooting and reworking this finished-but-not-really-finished movie for something like a year and a half, then began asking for the film to be delayed still further to allow time for even more reshoots and reworkings. Iger refused her the extra time (and money) for such additional bites at the apple.

Pasha has another scoop, this one only coming from his single source. LucasFilm "hired" a woman to produce a new show called The Acolyte, whose creator and showrunner was... Harvey Weinstein's former assistant. Wow, can Kathleen Kennedy pick 'em.

The woman turned down another offer she already had, to produce Colin Farrell's new Sugar detective show for Apple TV, to take this "job."

Then Kathleen Kennedy and LucasFilm told her there was no job. They offered her the insulting non-settlement of $5,000, despite the fact that she probably had been promised one half to one million by LucasFilm, and had walked away from a similar offer from Apple TV to take the non-existent LucasFilm job.

This woman hired a lawyer and sued. This is rare; usually these things are worked out behind the scenes. The speculation is -- this is only speculation-- that Kathleen Kennedy just doesn't have the authority to make the deals she keeps making, and could not greenlight The Acolyte, and could not then hire a producer for it. Thus, there was no money available for this "job" the woman was offered, and so LucasFilm had to claim the job just doesn't exist.

This speculation is fueled by the notion that in this type of clear breach of contract, usually the studio would pay out several hundred thousands to make the problem go away privately. Not a measly $5000 in petty cash.

So here's the new scoop from Pasha: Iger told Kennedy to settle with this woman to make the lawsuit go away Mostly Peacefully. And he told her that the money for the settlement would be coming out of Kathleen Kennedy's salary, not Disney's funds.

Wow.

Again, this stuff is in the category of rumor. Pasha's source "sparrow" is one that he's confirmed the identity of, but that doesn't mean that everything "sparrow" says is true.

Will these aggressive moves, if true, save Disney?

I sure hope not!

Die, Mouse, Die.

posted by Ace at 04:15 PM

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