Embattled Disney Exec Gets Contract Extension –  The only person that rivals Rian Johnson for “Most Disdain” by the Star Wars fanbase is Kathleen Kennedy, the head of Lucasfilm.  Kennedy has been accused of ignoring fans of the series and focusing on political ideologies instead of good films.  Considering just about every film has had director and creative issues; that seems to be a fair complaint.

However Disney and Lucas Films are doubling down on her, extending her deal until 2021.  It’s no secret that The Last Jedi and Solo: A Star Wars Story were met with immense backlash from fans and both failed to live up to the lofty expectations of their predecessors The Force Awakens and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story respectively.     While it’d be hard to kill the Star Wars franchise, Disney and Lucasfilms have inherited the possibly of killing of all good will and a consistent billion dollar franchise, if the 9th installment of the Saga flops (or is poorly received) under J.J. Abrams.

There were rumors of Lucasfilm parting ways with her during the summer, but it looks like they opted to have consistency at the top.  Just ask any Cleveland Browns fan, just because someone is brought back, doesn’t mean they deserve to be.

DC Universe Casts Original Character – The upcoming Swamp Thing series has added Jennifer Beals to play Sheriff Lucillia Cable. She’s one of the main characters of the upcoming series, and is expected to be best friends with Abby Arcane (Crystal Reed).  Still no word on who’ll play the titular Swamp Thing as of yet.  Beals has appeared in Book of Eli, The L Word and the Taken t.v. series.

PlayStation Cancels Major Event – The PlayStation Experience for 2018 was one that fans were gearing up for.  However, according to the chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shawn Layden, the event has been cancelled.  The PlayStation Blogcast had Layden on, and he revealed that PlayStation doesn’t have the content necessary to deliver; saying

For 2018 — I know this is going to be a disappointment to some people — but we decided to not hold PlayStation Experience this year,” said Layden. “We won’t have it in the states this year. The reasons behind that really are we don’t have — we have a lot of progress that we’re making on our games…Now that we have Spider-Man out the door, we’re looking down into 2019 games like Dreams and Days Gone.

But we wouldn’t have enough to bring people all together in some location North America to have that event. We don’t want to set expectations really high, and then not deliver on that. It was a hard decision, but we have determined that this year we will not hold PlayStation Experience.

It’s better to be upfront, then disappoint everyone.  A bad showing kills brand excitement more than a cancellation.

Quick Hits – Avi Arad told ComicBook.com that the Venom film was never going to be ‘R-Rated’ and cites his work on the 90’s Spider-Man cartoon as the reason why.  Alita: Battle Angle has been delayed from December 21st, 2018 to February 14th, 2019 instead, and the move was done in order to sync up with the Chinese New Year according to Deadline.  Despite Disney’s impending purchase of Fox, Fox has elected to push back Dark Phoenix from February 19th 2019, to June 7th, 2019 according to Deadline as well.  Deadline is also reporting Gambit now has a target release date of March 2020; which you can assume means it is dead in the water.  Fox is set to release a PG-13 version of Deadpool 2 according to Deadline (again).