Elon Musk doesn’t like what Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has done with the Star Wars franchise.
“She’s more deadly than the Death Star!” Musk wrote on his social media platform X on Friday in response to a meme that called Kennedy a “franchise killer.”
The Academy Award-winning film producer was appointed president of Lucasfilm after the company was acquired by Disney in 2012. But Kennedy’s leadership of Lucasfilm has drawn a mixed reception from Star Wars fans.
While Kennedy was initially able to land box office hits like 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and 2016’s “Rogue One,” Lucasfilm’s subsequent entries into the sci-fi franchise have been lacking.
In 2018, Star Wars saw a big box office bomb in “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” per Deadline.
The franchise’s foray into streaming also yielded mixed results, with shows like “The Book of Boba Fett” doing poorly with audiences, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
She’s more deadly than the Death Star!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2024
And it seems that Kennedy’s focus on progressive themes and female protagonists in Star Wars projects has been a huge bugbear for Musk.
“Kathleen Kennedy is super bigoted against men,” he wrote in a subsequent X post on Saturday, referring to an interview that Kennedy gave to The New York Times last month.
In the interview, Kennedy defended Leslye Headland, the director and writer of the latest Star Wars television series “The Acolyte,” after fans slammed Headland and called her “woke.”
“Operating within these giant franchises now, with social media and the level of expectation, it’s terrifying,” Kennedy told The Times.
“I think a lot of the women who step into ‘Star Wars’ struggle with this a bit more. Because of the fan base being so male-dominated, they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal,” she added.
Kathleen Kennedy is super bigoted against men
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 22, 2024
To be sure, Kathleen’s stewardship of Star Wars isn’t the only reason behind the franchise’s perceived decline among fans.
In 2019, then-Disney CEO Bob Iger said the studio might have released too many Star Wars projects after acquiring Lucasfilm. Iger stepped down as CEO in 2020 before returning to the job in 2022.
“I just think that we might’ve put a little bit too much in the marketplace too fast,” Iger told The New York Times in a report published in September 2019.
This criticism of Kennedy isn’t the first time Musk has expressed his displeasure at what he brands “woke” ideology, and people who champion diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
“DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it,” Musk said in an X post in January.
Kennedy also wasn’t the first executive to draw Musk’s ire regarding progressive corporate initiatives. Musk tore into fellow billionaire Mark Cuban after the latter voiced his support for corporate DEI initiatives earlier this year.
“Mark Cuban is desperately trying to signal his ‘virtue,’ but his hypocrisy convinces no one,” Musk said in an X post published in January.
Representatives for Musk and Kennedy did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
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