This week Kathleen Kennedy is on the show!
Ooooh! I'm gonna show her my Teek script.
This week on The Star Wars Show!
Andi sits down with Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy
We got behind-the-scenes at the Funko headquarters
and much, much more.
Now from the Lucasfilm headquarters
It's The Star Wars Show!
Hey I'm Anthony Carboni
and I'm Andi Gutierrez and this is The Star Wars Show
the only weekly Star Wars show...
Oh no! We've got no time for a patented Goots goof for this week.
We got too much show!
Okay then, news.
I love a Goots goof.
ILMxLab announced a new virtual reality experience today called Star Wars Droid Repair Bay.
The experience puts you onboard General Leia's ship as you quickly try to repair
a menagerie of defective droids.
And there is even a cameo from handsome space boy Poe Dameron.
So you know, you're really gonna want to check this one out.
It is really fun.
For more information about Droid Repair Bay and where to experience it for yourself
check out StarWars.com.
And while we're on the subject of headset enabled realities, Star Wars Jedi challenges is coming this Friday.
The smartphone powered augmented reality experience
lets you bring Star Wars into your home and train like a Jedi with the real lightsaber...
...controller.
You have to add the controller there it's definitely important.
The experience consists of three different modes.
Lightsaber battles,
holochess,
and strategic combat.
And they're also adding the Archivist.
An interactive manifestation of the holocron to guide you through your training.
You can check out Star Wars Jedi Challenges and the Archivist beginning this Friday.
On Monday Star Wars Battlefront II unveiled a brand new trailer during Paris games week.
But it's not just the Parisians getting Battlefront II exclusives.
Oh no, The Star Wars Show has landed our own exclusive first look
at gameplay footage of The Last Jedi's Kylo Ren in Battlefront II.
Enjoy!
Look at him, he's heading for that small moon.
That's no moon.
That's really interesting...
so Chewie's actually Rey's father. Huh?
Oh yeah, yeah.
You'd never see that coming.
Yeah, I know.
Oh, hey guys.
Please welcome Kathleen Kennedy to the show!
I want to say first off thank you so much for coming by.
I know you're incredibly busy
with all of the stuff that's going on in our galaxy.
Can you give me a quick update of what it is that you've been up to?
It's been pretty great. We literally just finished what was Red Cup
and we now know as Solo.
Which Ron Howard just announced recently.
And we're right on the verge of releasing The Last Jedi.
Right, The Last Jedi.
That is something we're incredibly excited about and I think the fans are getting excited.
Yeah, I mean we are definitely getting into The Last Jedi season right now and the hype is definitely growing.
What was it like working on that production?
You know I have to say Rian Johnson is
I don't have enough accolades to say about him.
He just had an amazingly good time every single day.
He's such a huge fan and I think he's done an exceptional job of taking these new characters
and some of the legacy characters
and moving us to this next place.
And I think there'll be some surprises that people aren't expecting.
That's what's so unique about what Ryan has brought to this.
He just has such an incredibly fertile imagination.
There's a brief little moment in The Last Jedi
where there's a little porg and then there's a little baby porg next to the porg.
If there's anything cuter than a porg it has to be a baby porg.
A baby porg.
Oh my gosh! I can't wait to see that.
[Laughing]
A baby porg.
So moving on to Solo.
You know we've had a lot of fun following along with Ron's, you know, Instagram and Twitter posts from set
because I mean it reminds us a lot of George's Transmissions from the Prequels for StarWars.com
There is a real importance of letting people have an inside look as to what we're doing
and experience the fun of what we're doing.
And I think Ron really captured that and had fun with it.
And it's really powerful in fostering our community.
How important would you say the contributions of, you know,
Dave Filoni and the animation team are to building the saga in this era?
I mean, Rebels is really what kicked off the new generation of Star Wars for the company.
and I think that what Dave and his team have done it's just amazing.
I don't think there's any surprise that they were nominated for an Emmy.
Right? It's just gotten better and better every season.
Yeah.
I'm kind of sad that it's coming to a close.
Yes, I think everybody is but now we're moving on to new things.
It's not just traditional media its experiences we're moving into the parks with Star Wars Galaxy's Edge.
We are so excited by that because again we can take innovation inside of live experiences.
Inside of what we think of as a park setting
combined with what you might see in a movie theater.
There's some really interesting innovation going on inside this company.
Yeah.
Where we've started with The Void,
Which is Secret's of the Empire, is what it's being called
and I just went through this and it is so cool.
It's in a different tool in storytelling
and by telling stories differently you'll experience stories differently.
And that's exciting.
All these lines are kind of blurring.
It's the way we look at games.
Like for instance Battlefront,
you get to have this first-person narrative driving the game
and the environments are every bit as good as a lot of things that you see in movies.
All of these things are merging.
These platforms in a way.
That I, I just think it's it's not disruptive, it's exciting.
That makes me really want to mention the story group.
They've been working so hard the past couple of years to make sure everything that comes out of here is cohesive.
What kind of process do you have working with them?
You know we're sitting down now, we're talking about the next 10 years of Star Wars stories
and we're looking at narratively where that might go.
Future stories beyond Episode 9 with these new characters.
Rey
Poe
Finn
BB-8
But we're also looking at working with people that are interested in coming into the Star Wars world
and taking us to places that we haven't been yet
and that's exciting too because it's a vast galaxy far, far away.
Right, so possibilities possibilities are endless.
Yeah.
If you had to leave one lesson for your successor,
or for Star Wars going forward or for Lucasfilm going forward, what would you say that is?
Work out, be healthy, and have stamina.
[Laughing]
And with that I need to go to the gym.
Cool because I haven't been in weeks.
Hey Andi, what you doing?
Super important things. How about you?
Me?
Oh, I'm just getting hyped up for this paid segment by our friends at Walmart.
Welcome to beautiful sunny Everett, Washington.
I'm standing outside the brand-new Funko headquarters
and I'm gonna go inside to talk about all the new Star Wars exclusive Funko Pops available at Walmart.
Come on!
Hey, Mark!
Andi!
So we are actually inside your headquarters.
Mhmm, floors two through five is kind of where all the artists and marketing people like myself sit.
But the entire first floor is a store.
But we think of it as a little bit more than a store.
We really envisioned it as a place where fans can come and experienced Funko.
It's something that we wanted it to be more than just a place to buy things.
Although, there are plenty of things to buy.
I thought our office was cool but we definitely don't have a bowling alley.
Just a place where you know employees can blow off a little steam.
The Star Wars section was kind of conceived to be a massive set piece from Hoth.
I love the cave scene!
We have our own ice cave!
I didn't even notice the little Pop skeleton.
Mark, tell me a little bit about these Walmart exclusives to have here.
One of the things that were most excited about we have what we're calling movie moments
which are iconic moments from the film that obviously recreated in pop form.
It's been on our minds for about three years.
We wanted to like capture iconic scenes in the movies
and it took a little while to get everybody on board but here we are.
Each one comes with a special base. There's a lot of detail carved and sculpted into each base.
We also have some exclusives from The Last Jedi.
I really love this Leia because she's got so much detail in her.
We're very lucky to have sculptors and artists of that quality here at Funko that can do that kind of detail.
Since we started doing it digitally there's just a lot more that we can do with like textures, like on General Leia.
The fact that we can do that and just kind of bang it out has really changed how Pop looks.
And we have also got some three packs
These are, I think, really special and fans are gonna love these
because it's got a lot of different characters that fans have been asking for for a while.
I do like the obscure characters. I want them to live in Pop form.
We got Porkins, finally have Porkins.
Yes, we made it. We basically made them wait and suffer but now they're finally gonna get Porkins.
Red 6, standing by.
This is so much fun. I don't want to leave!
Thank you to everyone here at Funko.
And remember you can pick up all of the Star Wars exclusives you saw today at Walmart.
You are watching The Star Wars Show!
First of all I want to say bravo to all the Mace Windu submissions that we got this week.
Absolutely, we got a couple of baby porgs from Steven Schultz and Mike Fatum.
A Kallus courtesy of Niles Revers
a gender swap Leia and Han from @SoullessAvenger
and Board Game Dad clocking in with a trifecta of Dr. Aphra, a death trooper, and Rey.
And speaking of Rey, everyone loves dressing up as Rey.
We got so many Rey submissions in fact that we can't name them all but you all look look wonderful.
Thank you to everyone who participated this week and as always
May the Force be with you!
I feel like Rey's just a great walking around costume.
Can confirm. It's very comfortable, very easy to wear.
You got some comfy space slippers.
You've got a nice leanin' stick.
You know it's all swishy.
Yeah.
Not too constricting.
And then there's this guy back here and there's only one of him so he must be a really really popular figure.
It must be a big seller.
There's dozens of people who want him.
Well we don't want to disappoint them.
I think he's just too beautiful for this world.