It has been a rough week for Game of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff. From the live tweets of their panel at the Austin Film Festival last weekend revealing the two were directly responsible for all of GOT’s failures, to having to allegedly step down from their Star Wars trilogy writing gig due to “not having the time” (lol, yeah, sure), things are looking grim for the two ruiners of HBO’s beloved series. However, from the ashes of their failures comes an ember of hope in the form of a beautiful and talented phoenix of industry in the form of Marvel Studios President and CCO for Marvel Comics, Kevin Feige.
That’s right, the genius behind the MCU will be producing the next Star Wars flick after Rise of Skywalker.
Or, at least we assume it will be the next flick. If not the very next one, it’ll be some time in the near future. But from the reports from CBR, it sounds like the next trilogy that D&D walked away from (lol, we still don’t believe they just walked away), Kevin Feige was added-on as a producer.
Variety originally reported that Feige will be joining Kathleen Kennedy, the President of Lucasfilm, in putting together the next line of Star Wars films that would have been the trilogy D&D were signed on to write the screenplays for.
As we all know, both The Force Awakens (TFA) and The Last Jedi (TLJ) blew the doors off the box office and smashed many records to earn billions of dollars for Lucasfilm and Disney alike. And despite the mixed reviews from the echo-chamber that is and can become of the internet, The Rise of Skywalker (TRoS) will likely pile on the mountains of cash this finale trilogy has amassed. However, due to such mixed reactions on these films, and the major flop that was Solo, Disney and Lucasfilm agreed to hold off on any more origin films, and postpone any major film projects within the Star Wars universe for at least a couple years, in order to get things right.
First, I wanted to point out that rumors in the industry are suggesting that among the course correction that was needed, Disney allegedly asked Weiss and Benioff to step down from their writing deal on the new trilogy kicking off in 2022. This was, and again I say “allegedly”, a ‘soft firing’ in order to save face for the two washed-up writers thus allowing them to get work without executing their careers publicly. Apparently, Disney was, yes, allegedly, unhappy with the internet’s response to the rushed and critically panned eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, and allowed the writers to be the ones to say that they had to “step down due to not having the time” needed to dedicate to a Star Wars franchise. This allegedly lead to their hiring at Netflix, and allowed Disney and Lucasfilm to steer back into the right direction for the future of the Star Wars series.
All of this seems to have been uncovered just this week, so we understand that this is a lot to take in. However, if the reports from Variety are correct, adding MCU mastermind Kevin Feige to the mix was necessary to give the Star Wars franchise a much-needed babysitter in order to make sure the next few movies are done in a way that Disney is satisfied with. And again, it seems like D&D just didn’t fit in that equation at all.
There has been no news or details on whether or not there are plans to give Kevin Feige a larger role in the Star Wars franchise at this time, although we would find it difficult to believe that Disney would anoint Feige the role of President. There is no way that man can oversee practically all of Marvel and Star Wars at the same time. There just simply isn’t enough time in the day, or days in the year to do that.
Kevin Feige joining Kennedy and the Star Wars franchise is a godsend, and we have high hopes knowing he is attached in some way. Although, and let’s be honest here, we are far more happy knowing that D&D are not. Way to dodge those bullets, Star Wars franchise.
