Kathleen Kennedy to step down from Lucasfilm

Tbf Star Wars fans are pretty horrible people.

Sure, but you don't wear that opinion on your sleeve if you're in marketing or your job is to have a vested interest in the success of the project.

I've heard two explanations for it.

1) They didn't have time. The purchase of Lucasfilm made Disney shareholders want to see some immediate return on the $4.5 billion purchase, and attempting to get all their story ducks in a row for filming an entire trilogy would have meant a year or two delay. Christmas 2015 was locked in as a release, and so the timeline working back meant no time to flesh out a perfect story.

2) Disney was not confident enough to commit to a trilogy out of the gate. They refused to sign the director and writer to three films and didn't want to waste time developing too far out in advance story-wise out of fear that it was going to be a dud. If the movie was terrible and flopped hard, they could simply abort everything and try again without having to lose all the time and effort they'd have devoted to movies 2 and 3.

Personally, I think Disney as a company has gotten way too big for its own good. Too much rides on creating a single media franchise spanning all of their business segments (film, TV, games, parks, cruises, consumer products). They can't budget for and make a movie on its own. They have to loop in everything from all divisions, creating an overly bureaucratized and negatively synergistic mess. The best Disney park is in Tokyo because its not run by Disney. They get to independently choose what to add to the park, which is why their most recent expansion focused on fricking Tangled and Peter Pan, to rave reviews. Every other Disney park is beholden to the Mouse and the Mouse's latest media property. They have to plan in lockstep because when Disney decides its going to make a movie they factor in that they'll be selling ride merchandise in the park for the film five years later when they initially budget everything.

I'm sure some Imagineers had truly creative ideas when told that Disney wanted to build a boutique, immersive hotel. I'm sure they all died inside when told that the hotel plan had been financially tied from the very start to the new trilogy so they'd better stick to that.

The entire thing should be blown up and each sector forced to survive on its own merits.