Disney Headlines for March 4th, 2025
In this week’s Disney Headlines, we’ll discuss the Kathleen Kennedy story, Universal’s potential impact on Disney, and the Year of Stitch.
My wife and other Stitch superfans will very much enjoy this week’s Disney’s Headlines.
Welcome to the Year of Stitch
Photo: Playbuzz.com
Are you familiar with the NYC Toy Fair? Each year, the biggest toy manufacturers in the world flock to New York.
While there, they attempt to convince retailers to use some of their precious floor space on toys.
Image: The Healthy Mouse
Each year, we typically know in March what the most popular holiday gifts will be.
I’ll go ahead and spoil that this year’s biggest toy for adults is probably this:
I don’t claim to understand it either, but it’s allegedly this year’s fidget spinner, a toy my wife still uses in the year of our lord 2025.
Image credit: Disney Store
Some crazes never die, no matter how outdated they may appear to everyone except my wife.
Well, that’s somehow relevant here as she owns – and this is not a joke – more than 100 pieces of Stitch merchandise.
Image credit: Disney Store
She is NOT alone. I’ve been chasing hard numbers for the body of a decade now, but I’m clear about one thing.
Stitch merchandise remains one of Disney’s biggest brands more than 20 years after the release of Lilo & Stitch.
Photo: The Disney Store
Not coincidentally, a live-action remake of the film will debut in May.
Guess what everyone at the NYC Toy Fair just learned! Yup, an unholy onslaught of Stitch merch is in the offing.
Photo: Disney Store
We’ve unofficially entered the Year of Stitch, which is remarkable since Disney offered monthly Stitch product lines the past two years.
Somehow, 2025 will top Stitch Attacks Snacks and other recent toy releases.
Disney fully intends to saturate the market with all the new live-action Stitch toys imaginable.
And I, for one, welcome the Year of Stitch, as it’ll make my holiday shopping oh so much easier.
I mean, have you seen this? We’re barely in March, yet this Stitch “Puppetronic” has already won Toy Book’s Product of the Year!
The Kathleen Kennedy Confusion
Photo: Rappler
During the early days of the internet, cross-site slap flights among reporters were a thing.
I know this because I unerringly found myself in the middle of several of them.
Photo: wirefly.com
We don’t witness them often these days, and that’s particularly true with mainstream media sites…until last week.
As I discussed in detail the other day, Puck’s Matthew Belloni confirmed a story with three different sources.
Image: Lucasfilm
The report involves Kathleen Kennedy, the head of Lucasfilm, who will allegedly retire at the end of the year.
The Hollywood Reporter also confirmed the story, which means that somewhere in the range of three to five sources verified it.
In short, Lucasfilm is leaking like crazy, which isn’t great in and of itself.
But the story took a turn when veteran media reporter Mike Fleming Jr. published this article.
Photo: Hollywood Reporter
Fleming has worked with Deadline for 15 years now and spent 20 at THR before that.
So, his opening assault of Belloni’s reporting is noteworthy. Fleming leads with:
Kathleen Kennedy
“Belloni for years has been beating on Kennedy like she owes him money, and this week he reported Kennedy was retiring.
“I recall he essentially did the same thing more than a year ago, and yet here she still is…”
Kathleen Kennedy and Ewan McGregor
Somewhere, the ghost of Nikki Finke is giggling as the calmest person at Deadline just impersonated her.
You don’t care about journalist drama, though. Why would you? I don’t care about it, and I’ve been a part of it!
(The Walt Disney Company/Image Group LA) EWAN MCGREGOR, KATHLEEN KENNEDY (PRESIDENT, LUCASFILM)
Still, Fleming’s story itself failed to clear up anything. He got Kennedy to speak on record, which hints at what happened.
Generally, when a media company faces a PR crisis like this, they turn to a friendly journalist to publish a kindly piece.
That’s what was supposed to happen here, but the clarification failed to clarify anything.
Kennedy’s Lucasfilm Status
Photo Lucasfilm.
As a reminder, Kennedy has led Lucasfilm since Disney acquired it from founder George Lucas.
Under Kennedy’s watch, the franchise has experienced its highest high with Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
But Lucasfilm has also suffered the lowest low with Solo: A Star Wars Story. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny bombed, too.
That’s just the film side. On the television side, Lucasfilm’s live-action programs on Disney+ have been an equally mixed bag.
Image: Disney
While we’ve had highlights like The Mandalorian and Andor, we’ve also had The Acolyte and The Book of Boba Fett.
Rarely happy Star Wars fans have wanted Kennedy gone for the body of the past decade, Baby Yoda notwithstanding.
Photo: Lucasfilm
Now, speculation is rampant that people within Lucasfilm feel similarly. Why else would they leak this story to Belloni and THR?
Now, we have Kennedy’s on-record denial, which includes these mercurial quotes:
Photo: Lucasfilm
“The truth is, and I want to just say loud and clear, I am not retiring. I will never retire from movies. I will die making movies.”
“I can’t say who (my successor) is because there’s just an internal process that goes on inside a large corporation and a publicly held company…”
©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
“We’ll probably make an announcement (about her successor) months or a year out, and I have every intention of sticking around to help that person be successful.”
So, she’s not retiring, and she’s denying the rumor.
They’re having discussions about her successor and will announce it within the year, though.
Woof. As incoherent as that is, the recent Star Wars struggles make a lot more sense.
Credit: Disney
Who could work with that sort of doublespeak all day?
Long story short, it sure looks like this story leaked before Lucasfilm expected.
Now, they’re trying to buy time since they weren’t ready to announce yet.
More Theme Park War Discussions
Photo: Universal
We’re now less than 80 days from the opening of Universal Epic Universe.
In another 60 days or so, the publicity campaign will go into overdrive, but some reporters have gotten ahead of the game.
Disney vs Epic Universe
Forbes has published an article about how the new park opening could impact Disney.
MickeyBlog has been discussing this for a couple of years now, and Disney has broached the subject several times, too.
Photo: Universal
This article points out a tourism tidbit that more than six million of the annual 74 million Orlando vacationers come from overseas.
This fact matters because one of Universal’s primary goals with Epic Universe is to entice people to spend more nights onsite.
Photo: Universal
International travelers stay in Orlando for an average of nine nights.
Should Universal lure them for three or four nights, that should hurt Disney, which loses a couple of nights in the process.
Photo: Universal
Currently, Universal’s realistic hope for a split is two nights as opposed to Disney’s seven. A four-five split impacts Disney.
So, that’s one of the primary data points we’ll be tracking as the theme park war heats up.
Photo: Disney
I’ll add that Disney isn’t offering a sizable number of discounts, which the company would do if it were struggling to book hotel rooms.
Should that change, we’d have a sign that Epic Universe is having a negative effect on Disney. Stay tuned!
Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below, and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond Level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon!
