BEYOND TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: STAR WARS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SHARED CINEMATIC UNIVERSES IN HOLLYWOOD CINEMA

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF SHARED CINEMATIC UNIVERSES

IN HOLLYWOOD CINEMA

NAME:

HARRY MARCHBANK

STUDENT NUMBER:

10487115

DATE OF COMPLETION:

28 JUNE 2018

SUPERVISOR:

MARK STEWART

SECOND READER:

ABE GEIL

INSTITUTE:

UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

PROGRAMME

RMA: MEDIA STUDIES

HARRY MARCHBANK JOAN MUYSKENWEG 15D-21 AMSTERDAM, 1096 CJ THE NETHERLANDS hmarchbank@googlemail.com +31 6 39 36 08 29

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INTRODUCTION

Star Wars has always existed across a range of media and has been known for the huge variety of merchandised ancillary products that the franchise produces. When negotiating with Twentieth Century Fox to create the first film in the series, Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), the series’ creator George Lucas agreed to waive his fee as a director in order to receive a percentage of money from the sales of ancillary products (Jenkins and Hassler-Forest 17). Because of this deal and the success of the first film, Lucas rapidly expanded the franchise into ancillary markets, introducing a huge range of Star Wars products. These included simple merchandised fare, such as lunch boxes, toys, and bed spreads, and more extravagant affairs such as amusement park rides, but also included numerous media texts, such as television series, comics, video games and books that expanded the franchise narratively beyond the films. The sum of these texts came to be known as the Expanded Universe.

In 2012, The Walt Disney Company1_{purchased Lucas’ company Lucasfilm, and with it}

the company’s assets; most importantly, the intellectual property rights to the Star Wars franchise. Since Disney’s acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, a distinct paradigm can be seen forming in the way that all new texts are narratively coherent with one another; this differs from the Expanded Universe, which was rife with narrative contradictions and plot holes between texts. This coherence is part of a strategy by Disney that they term “interconnected storytelling”, whereby all narrative texts will be created to further expand the same fictional world (“The Legendary Star…” N.p.). The obvious theoretical model for understanding how Disney have structured Star Wars is Henry Jenkin’s transmedia storytelling; however, in this paper I reject this model and propose shared cinematic universes as a better model to understand Star Wars, as well as a recently growing number of similar cinematically-focused projects.

Prior to Disney’s acquisition, the Expanded Universe was comprised of stories created by numerous different authors and creative figures; while Lucas was active in the creation of all of the Star Wars films and select other narrative texts, he offered no authorial or editorial input in the vast majority of the Expanded Universe. Lucas stated in reference to 1 Henceforth referred to as Disney.

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the Expanded Universe: “I don’t read that stuff, I haven’t read any of the novels, I don’t know anything about that world. That’s a different world than my world. […] They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible” (Spelling 48). The Expanded Universe effectively was structured by a hierarchal model where texts were deemed as belonging to one of five levels of canon; these were conceived of and administered by Lucasfilm. The top level of which was GWL-canon2_{, which consisted of anything that was said}

or authored by Lucas himself, including interviews, deleted scenes, and films. Lucas maintained the privilege to retcon any text that came before, including his own authored works, and thus make it non-canon. The four different levels beneath GWL-canon ranged from television canon to non-can. The former was seen as canon, as long as it did not contradict Lucas’ work, whereas the latter included ‘what-if’ stories, parallel worlds, and crossover appearances of franchise characters in other media, such as advertisements (Whitbrook N.p.). Its hierarchical structure, caused the Expanded Universe to exist as a tangled web of often contradictory texts, lacking an overall narrative coherence.

Since Bob Iger became the CEO of Disney in 2005, the company has enacted a strategy in which it acquires rival entertainment companies, in order to obtain intellectual property rights to popular characters and franchises. Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm allowed them full access to the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Upon the completion of this acquisition, Disney announced that a new trilogy of films “and more” would go into production in the, then dormant, Star Wars franchise (Ingraham N.p.). As of the time of writing, Disney have released four films, two from the main saga and two anthology films3_{, alongside numerous other narrative texts, such as books, comics, short}

stories, video games, and television series. Crucially all of these narrative texts are part of the same canon and together form a single fictional universe.

2 Named after George Lucas’ initials.

3 Saga films refers to the numbered films of the Star Wars franchise such as Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Episode VII: The Force Awakens these films are considered the main entries into the series. The terming of these films as the ‘saga’ films comes from the series creator George Lucas. Other standalone films that are not numbered and bear the subtitle “A Star Wars Story” such as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story are known as ‘anthology films’. Further to this, the three Star Wars films released between 1977-1983 shall be referred to the as the ‘original trilogy’, the trio of films released between 1999-2005 the ‘prequel trilogy’, while the two saga films released in 2015 and 2017 along with the upcoming Episode IX will be referred to as the sequel trilogy.

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In 2014, Disney rebranded the Expanded Universe as Star Wars Legends and announced that the saga films, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) animated film and its spin-off TV series of the same name (2008-2014), would be the only previously-released Star Wars texts that would-be part of a new canon. Subsequently, all additional texts that had previously formed the Expanded Universe were decanonised and rebranded as Star Wars Legends material. This move by Disney essentially decluttered the convoluted Star Wars canon, and allowed for the implementation of a new hierarchy-free, singular canon. As part of the rebranding press release, it was announced that “all aspects of Star Wars storytelling moving forward will be connected”, overseen by the Lucasfilm Story Group; a new division of Lucasfilm that is responsible for determining canon and preventing contradictions across texts (“The Legendary Star…” N.p.). In becoming a singular narrative that is told over multiple different mediums, Star Wars fits the definition of what Henry Jenkins terms ‘transmedia storytelling’. Jenkins broadly defines the phenomena as a story that “unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole” (2006 95).

In this thesis, it will be argued that the post-Disney Star Wars franchise, while meeting Jenkins’ definition of transmedia storytelling, is better understood as what I term a ‘shared cinematic universe’. This is a term that is applicable to large scale, cinematic projects that feature numerous films, typically a film series and spin-off films, transmedia extensions and a large degree of intertextuality. Crucially, their transmedia extensions can be considered hierarchically subservient to the films, which are the privileged entries in the franchise. Furthermore, I argue that transmedia storytelling is focused around a single story that is told through multiple mediums, while a shared cinematic universe is concerned with telling multiple distinct stories, in order to furnish a fictional world. This thesis will begin with a chapter that lays out a theoretical overview of transmedia storytelling, drawn from scholarship on the subject. This will be followed by a chapter that puts forth my definition and understanding of shared cinematic universes. Following this, Star Wars will be analysed and argumentatively demonstrated to be better understood as a shared cinematic universe, rather than an instance of transmedia storytelling. These arguments will be divided into two sections: the first focusing on a production perspective, while the second focuses on the content of Star Wars texts.

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CHAPTER 1:

TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING

In the following section, a model through which transmedia storytelling can be understood is presented. This draws heavily on the work of Henry Jenkins, but also utilises interventions into the debate from other scholars that have worked on the subject since Jenkins first popularised it. In addition to discussions of the theory of transmedia storytelling, the chapter features a section discussing scholarly analysis of the Star Wars franchise in light of its history and utilisation of transmedia practices.

1.1 What is Transmedia Storytelling?

Henry Jenkins is considered to have written the foundational text on transmedia storytelling, having first published on the phenomenon in 2006. Jenkins defines the process as follows:

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it [sic] own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.

(Jenkins N.p. 2007)

Key to Jenkins definition of a transmedia story, is that a fiction is told across many distinct mediums, and that each text does not simply repeat or adapt a story, but adds unique narrative fragments, in turn further embellishing the overall narrative. Notably, Jenkins argues that each narrative fragment must be ‘integral’ to the larger fiction. Jenkins highlights the manner in which plot points run through numerous texts, arguing that there is no singular unifying text or medium from which the whole story can be understood; it is only in the sum of the narrative fragments from every text that the entire story exists. To illustrate his description of transmedia storytelling, Jenkins relies on examples from The Matrix series - consisting of films, books, comics, video games, and anime - that revolves around a future in which self-aware machines have enslaved the majority of humanity inside a virtual reality world, known as the Matrix. A key example Jenkins gives from The Matrix franchise details the creation and delivery of a message, which clearly demonstrates how narrative fragments

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from multiple texts create a larger story. Chronologically, this message is first revealed in the animated short, Final Flight of the Osiris (2003) (Jenkins 2006 102), where the crew of the Osiris finds out that the series’ antagonists, sentinel machines, are planning an attack on the protagonist’s headquarters, Zion. The crew decide they must send a message warning Zion of the impending attack. In the climax of the short, the message is delivered into a postal box inside the Matrix, moments before the Osiris and its crew are destroyed by sentinel machines. In the prologue to the video game Enter the Matrix (2003), the player controls one of the two player-characters, Niobe or Ghost, and is tasked with retrieving the message from the post-box and escape with it from the Matrix, in order to deliver it to Zion. The film The Matrix Reloaded (2003) opens with the message being received by the film’s protagonists in Zion. The contents of the letter set in motion the chain of events of the second and third film of the series. In the scenario where the consumer has only watched The Matrix Reloaded, they would still have enough information to understand it. However, they will have also missed out on a huge amount of information, explaining how the narrative had reached this point. In order to have an in-depth understanding of the entirety of the franchise’s story, a consumer must have knowledge of the message’s conception and the arduous and lengthy process by which it was delivered. In order to fully grasp this, the consumer must therefore have sought out and consumed three different texts.

Carlos Alberto Scolari provides four ways in which a transmedia narrative can expand on, what he terms their ‘macrostory’. Scolari leaves the term macrostory relatively undeveloped, only using it to distinguish between the central narrative and other narratives that expand upon it. In relation to the television series, 24 (2001-2010) he argues the macrostory constitutes the “narrative core” of the series, so the “succession of seasons and their prequels” (Scolari 598). By ‘macrostory’, Scolari implies the most important narrative, presumably distinguished due its scope, economic importance, and the prominence of the medium on which it is told; unfortunately, he does not elaborate on this. The four ways in which the macrostory can be expanded, as defined by Scolari, are: interstitial microstories, parallel stories, peripheral stories and user-generated content platforms (ibid.). The first of these, are texts that take place in the narrative gaps between instalments of the macrostory; thus, they expand the narrative in-between seasons of 24. Parallel stories are narrative texts that take place, chronologically, at the same time as the macrostory; for instance, a text exploring the adventures of a secondary character who is not featured in the macrostory.

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Peripheral stories are texts that have a weak relationship to the macrostory, often only being set in the same world, such as a story about a minor character that is no longer part of the macrostory. User content generated platforms differ from the other three types of expansion in that they are not usually sanctioned by producers, but instead, are often grassroots attempts by fans to expand the story. They are almost always considered to be non-canon expansions of a fictional world, examples of which include discussion boards and fan-fiction.

Scolari’s work on how transmedia narratives can be expanded raises the question of what types of transmedia texts can be seen as entry points to the series. Entry points are the texts that consumers initially interact with in a transmedia narrative, and thus draw them in to explore the narrative in further texts. In theory, as noted by Jenkins, all of the different texts in a transmedia narrative can act as entry points (2006 96). While it is true that any text, regardless of the size of its target audience, can act as the initial entry point for a consumer, Jenkins fails to differentiate between various types of entry points. While he notes that different mediums have differing sizes of audiences, with films and television having the most diverse, while comics and video games have traditionally had more niche audiences; he seems to overlook the scenario in which the majority of consumers will come to a transmedia project via a major medium, and then explore the more niche mediums. Jenkins presents a model where consumers are introduced to the project almost exclusively via a medium in which they are already invested. Thus, a fan of comic books will most likely encounter the series through comic books, and a video-game fan will most likely be introduced to the series through a video game. In this model, fans will move to texts in different mediums only after this interaction, thus forming a crossover market (ibid.). This assumption, however, underplays the role of convergence in modern media consumption, and overplays the role of medium-specific niche markets. Consumers are not necessarily medium specific in their media-consuming practices; to an extent the crossover market is pre-formed, as consumers are already likely to consume texts from a range of different mediums in their consumption of entertainment. For the majority of people the entry point will be the texts with the largest target audience, simply due to the larger profiles that these mediums possess compared to others. This means that consumers are more likely to be made aware of these via adverts, discussion boards and other promotional media. Thus, while it is possible for any text to act as an entry point into a transmedia narrative, it is far

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more common for the most popular medium to take on this role and act as the initial entry point. This is clearly observable in The Matrix franchise, where the first film in the series is very exposition heavy, establishing the rules of the franchise’s fictional universe and narrative, facilitating understanding of the other texts in the series. This is striking when compared to other texts in the series, such as The Final Flight of the Osiris. This instalment does not announce the rules of the universe, but instead expects the viewer to already have a sufficient understanding of them. Despite this, The Final Flight of the Osiris can act as an entry point in theory, should it be the first text of the series consumed, and it can serve an introduction into the narrative of the series as a whole, it would just require further exploration of texts for more information that would then re-contextualise its events to make them comprehensible.

It is important to note that transmedia narratives are not exclusively made-up of major franchises centred around films and television. Both examples discussed above happened to be produced by major media corporations, but this is only one type of transmedia narrative; others come in many different forms, ranging from video game productions with a variety of spin-off content, such as comics and webisodes, to low-budget independent web productions. An example of the latter is The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012-2013), an American web series that was produced outside of the major media industries. The series, a modernised adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), consists of a series of vlogs-style clips that were periodically uploaded to the video-sharing website YouTube. The series took place in real-time with a new episode released every few days, detailing what had happened since the previous release in the main character’s life. Alongside the vlogs, characters of the show ‘maintained’ a social media presence on websites such as Tumblr and Twitter, where online conversations between characters would further build the narrative, thus blending the ‘real world’ with the series’ fictional world (Tepper 53). Despite having a widely different scope and economic situation to franchises such as 24 and The Matrix, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries also meets Jenkins’ criteria of transmedia storytelling. Transmedia storytelling has a fairly broad definition, and it encompasses a wide range of projects.

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Media franchising is a more widespread phenomenon than transmedia storytelling, for the simple reason that all instances of transmedia storytelling are themselves also instances of franchising. Prior to the 1980s, media companies tended to focus on a single medium, but the birth of media franchising in the 1980s and 1990s gave rise to large media conglomerates that broke down these barriers; companies started to expand into multiple other mediums. This change resulted in the need for content with the potential to becomes “brands that could be deployed across media channels” (Johnson 4). This led to the rise of franchising, broadly defined as “the multiplied replication of culture from intellectual property resources” (Johnson 6). Unlike in transmedia storytelling, this replication does not have to be narrative, it can also take others forms, such as merchandising, toys, and music. Furthermore, narrative texts are not required to extend the overall story of the franchise, they can simply be adaptations of pre-existing material or even contradict previous texts. This is due to the fact that many franchises do not have a unified narrative, but rather, can be seen as a collection of texts that are all built around the same brand. In the same way, all instances of transmedia storytelling are franchises, in that they are a collection of texts that are based around the same brand, the key difference being that they do tell a unified story. Therefore, transmedia storytelling can be seen as a subset of media franchises that operate in a specific way.

Jenkins largely ignores methods of collaborative corporate authorship in transmedia storytelling, instead focusing on instances with strong authorial figures (Johnson 31). Derek Johnson, however analyses this form of collaborative corporate authorship and the processes by which media franchises operate; he argues that collaborative production and authorship is constitutive of media franchising:

the media franchise of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has constituted and been constituted by the shared exchange of content resources across multiple industrial sites and contexts of production operating in collaborative but contested ways through networked relation to one another.

(Johnson 7)

Johnson puts particular emphasis on the way that media franchises are constructed, in part through the tensions that develop as resources flow between different media sites. By this

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he means that each industrial site has its own goals; for instance, at one site a film will be produced, while at another a video game must be produced based on this film. Each site will be working towards different goals though there will be overlap in this goal meaning there must be forms of collaboration; for example, the video game studio must have information about the film while the film is still in production. In transmedia storytelling, this collaborative network must be stronger and more co-ordinated than in traditional media franchises, as the goals of individual sites coalesce to a greater degree.

1.3 Paratexts

Jonathan Gray uses the term paratext to describe the variety of materials that orbit around a text (6). These materials are extremely diverse, and include materials such as DVD box arts, trailers, novelizations, forum posts, reviews, advertisements, and other non-tangible entities, such as genre, intellectual property, and oral discussion of a text, among countless others (ibid.). Gray argues that paratexts should not be seen as simply spin-offs and promotional material, but instead, that they do in fact shape understandings and meanings of texts and thus, help to create them (ibid.). According to Gray, paratexts are the first experience we will have of any given text and so they govern ways that texts are encountered and read: “paratexts tell us what to expect, and in doing so, they shape the reading strategies that we will take with us “into” the text, and they provide the all-important early frames through which we will examine, react to, and evaluate textual consumption” (26). For instance, when browsing for a film to watch on a streaming platform such as Netflix each text has a picture and a short descriptive blurb. These are paratexts as they help to govern reading strategies: if the blurb and picture point towards the film being part of the horror film genre then the audience will employ different reading strategies than if they pointed towards it being a romantic comedy film. Here, it is important to distinguish between paratexts and entry points. An entry point is the first text of a transmedia narrative that a consumer consumes, while a paratext is not necessarily a text itself but the first experience of a text. For example, The Matrix Reloaded might be a consumer’s entry point into The Matrix franchise, but a poster for the film would be the paratext that gives the consumer the first experience of the film; the poster itself is not part of the transmedia narrative and thus it cannot be considered an entry point.

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Paratexts can be divided into two categories, those that “control and determine our entrance to a text—entryway paratexts—and those that inflect or redirect the text following initial interaction—in medias res paratexts” (Gray 35). The first of these categories, serve two purposes: they help the consumer form reading strategies prior to consuming the text, and they also act as adverts to attract consumers towards a text. Entryway paratexts, such as the above example of Netflix pictures and blurbs, attempt to distinguish the text from others. Whenever a person chooses to engage with a text they practice what Gray terms speculative consumption. This is the idea that while one does not know with certainty what they will receive from a text until they consume it, they will use available information, of which paratexts are a key source, in order to create an idea of what the text will offer and whether they would want to consume it based on this assessment (Gray 24). Paratexts such as trailers, adverts, and posters provide information about a text in ways specifically designed to appeal to consumers, and thus attract viewers towards consuming the text. The second category that paratexts can be divided into, in media res paratexts, function during and after the initial interaction with a text. Will Brooker raises the notion of “overflow” to explain how certain texts now extend beyond the bounds of their mediums (457). For instance, an episode of a television show may last for an hour, but one can now engage with the program for much longer through extensions to the text, such as websites, novels, comics, and forums. This raises questions of when the show truly begins and ends. While “overflow” suggests content moving from a central medium outward, Henry Jenkins suggests “convergence” which results in the same outcome: texts that are stretched across multiple media. The main difference between these two however, is that convergence suggests the coming together of disparate entities rather than the expansion of a single entity into multiple (Jenkins 2006 2). These two processes result in numerous paratexts, designed to be encountered during or after interaction with a text, in order to extend and augment the experience. In certain cases, these in media res paratexts are narrative in that they expand the narrative of a series, while in others, they only seek to extend the experience of the series through encouraging consumer engagement via outlets such as discussion and consumption.

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Even within highly-commercial and corporate-controlled transmedia narratives there is a huge amount of differentiation in how they originate and the way they are authored. Jenkins highlights one such origin with The Matrix, an example of transmedia storytelling in which the franchise is created top-down and “conceived from the very beginning as a project that develops over many different media platforms” (Ryan 363). However, not all transmedia narratives are created in this same way. Marie-Laure Ryan highlights another model by which transmedia narratives originate that she argues Jenkins fails to highlight: a bottom-up model in which the popularity of a text allows for further texts to be created within the same franchise. Thus, a transmedia narrative is born through previously unplanned narrative expansion. This is what took place with Star Wars’ Expanded Universe wherein the popularity of the original trilogy of films allowed for expansion of the narrative into other mediums. It should be noted that these two forms of origin are not mutually exclusive but should be seen as poles bookending a spectrum upon which a transmedia project sits (ibid.). Maj Krzysztof critiques Jenkin’s work on transmedia storytelling, as it only engages with the type of narratives who favour god-like world-builders that have the power to determine what is canonical (85). The god-like world-builder has been a staple of the genre with many of the most popular media franchises and fictional universes having a single commanding authorial presence. These range from fictional universes originating in novels, such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth and J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, to films such as George Lucas’ Star Wars. In recent years this setup has gained prominence in television as well, where a shift which has occurred, elevating many showrunners and writers to the status of “singular authorities, to be celebrated or blamed for all aspects of the texts” by fans (Busse 63).

The practicalities of a singular authorial role are eroded in transmedia storytelling due to the necessity of collaboration between artists in a range of mediums; despite this, there has been a tendency for transmedia narratives to be portrayed as the work of “a single author/textual authority figure” (Scott 43-44). This is also commonly seen in television, an extremely collaborative medium in which there are typically multiple writers and directors working on a single season, in the form of the showrunner. Despite not being the sole creative figure to work on a series, showrunners are often afforded a singular authorial presence as creator and omniscient authority by fans and the media. Suzanne Scott recognises the ‘fanboy auteur’ as a growing authorial identity that transmedia authors

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adopt. A fanboy auteur “attempts to navigate and break conventional boundaries between producers and consumers” thus seeming “relatable because of their fan credentials, which are narrativised and (self-)promoted as an integral part of their appeal as a transmedia interpreter for audiences” (Scott 44). An important role that fanboy auteur play is their functioning as the ‘bible’ of the transmedia narrative. The perception by fans of them possessing complete authority over a text makes them a central figure in deeming what is canonical and the correct way that a series should be read (Scott 45). Fanboy auteurs are effectively an industrial strategy by which directors’ self-identification as a ‘fanboy’, means that they can come to be accepted by fans as ‘one of our own’, and in turn become a visible mediator between production and reception (Scott 51).

Jenkins responded directly to Scott’s arguments, countering that fanboy auteurs could be seen as engendering certain forms of fan creativity, rather than inhibiting them. The way in which he highlights this is possible is through fan speculation that arises due to the auteur figure. Jenkins gives the example of the original run of Twin Peaks (1990-1991) and the way that fans perceived David Lynch, the series’ creator and primary authorial figure. Lynch was seen as the “master programmer” of the series, who left vague clues in his work, leaving large numbers of fans to attempt to “crack the code”, and unravel these clues (Jenkins 2013 55-56). This had the effect of increasing the spaces in which fans could speculate about the series, a form of fan creativity. The speculation was enhanced by Lynch, as fans were able to utilise their knowledge of his filmography and personality in their attempts to gain a greater understanding of the show’s mythology. The same can be said to a greater degree with more typical fanboy auteurs, as they make themselves more available to fans via podcasts, social media, and other forms of interaction, thus offering fans better opportunities to get to know them.

1.5 Transmedia Storytelling and Star Wars

Despite only becoming a transmedia narrative in 2014 when its narrative was horizontally reorganised, Star Wars has had a long and complex transmedia history. Particularly, with regards to the way that authorship has functioned within the franchise. This is in large part due to the numerous creative personnel that have worked on the series in parallel to the privileged authorial voice of George Lucas. The scale of the franchise’s transmedia extensions and its complex history of authorship have led to a large canon of scholarly work

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on transmedia and Star Wars. In the interest of the scope of this paper and brevity, the following section will focus exclusively on scholarship that either deals with Star Wars as a transmedia narrative, as defined by Jenkins, and work that deals explicitly with authorship in Star Wars.

Tara Lomax studies the relationship that Star Wars’ originator George Lucas has with the franchise’s transmedia history. Lucas’ authorial voice has always been privileged within the Star Wars franchise, both officially by Lucasfilm, and unofficially by fans. Despite this, Lucas had little authorial input into the vast majority of the Star Wars narrative. Lomax argues that Lucas thus has a contradictory authorial presence, in that throughout the franchise, while his singular textual authority alluded to “romanticized conceptions of the author as divine presence”, in actuality his own role was “contested and ambiguous” due to the huge amount of work in the franchise in which he had no or very little creative input, instead choosing to outright disregard it (37; 42). Lomax’s study argues that the rapid expansion and scale of the Star Wars’ transmedia franchise has created a contested authorial position for Lucas, as he is simultaneously focused exclusively upon his own authored works, yet unconsciously inscribed into the franchise’s entire textual system (41). The tensions in Lucas’ position leads Lomax to conclude that transmedia texts should not be conceived of as exclusively auteur- or collaboratively-driven, but rather, “as a site of dialogical relations between notions of singular authorship and collaborative creative practices” (48).

Sean Guynes approaches questions of authorship in Star Wars via the numerous novels that have been published as part of the franchise. Printed works have always been an important part of the Expanded Universe, in terms of quantity, as most of the Star Wars narrative took place in the hundreds of novels and comics (Guynes 143). Guynes’ focuses upon the multi-authored nineteen-book series New Jedi Order (1999-2003) and how it came into existence through industrial collaboration between its publisher, Lucasfilm representatives and numerous authors. Lucasfilm devised the series as part of a strategy to channel Star Wars print operations into a more coherent and singular entity. Prior to this, the Star Wars print texts were a patchwork collection of unrelated series and titles that covered vastly disparate parts of the fictional universe. In order to achieve this, the series was conceived through via industrial collaboration in order to maintain a coherency, initially hindered by the wide range of authors that would be working on the series. The

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collaborative tactics necessary to create this series, Guynes argues, can be seen as precursors to the way that Star Wars texts are now produced under Disney; via a ‘committee’ that oversees the universe and maintains narrative cohesion while delegating other responsibilities to creative personal working on differing projects (145).

Lincoln Geraghty analyses the recent developments of the Star Wars franchise’s structure and narrative in order to investigate the relationship between transmedia storytelling and franchising. He argues that the characters Boba Fett, Darth Maul, and Grand Admiral Thrawn, who appear throughout the franchise, highlight “the interconnected nature of corporate production, fan consumption, and transmedia world-building in the context of cross-platform character development” (119). These characters were chosen by Geraghty for the different ways in which they became important transmedia characters within the Star Wars universe, and because they come from “different iterations and time periods in the Star Wars franchise” (119). Boba Fett originally appeared in an animated Star Wars Holiday Special4_{(1978), a straight-to-television film released on CBS. He subsequently}

became an important character in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and has appeared in numerous subsequent films, comics, and video games, essentially becoming a cult figure that is widely popular with fans of the series. Maul is introduced in the prequel trilogy and, despite his apparent death in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, was resurrected and became a central character in the Clone Wars film and televisions series. Thrawn was introduced in the novel Star Wars: Heir to the Empire (1991), at a time when Star Wars was dormant as a cinematic franchise and was only producing texts in the Expanded Universe. Thrawn has never appeared in a film and all of his previous pre-Disney are appearances in texts have since been rebranded and decanonised, as part of the Star Wars: Legends. However, he has since been reintroduced into the Star Wars canon through a series of novels. Geraghty argues that characters such as these three are integral to the establishing of Star Wars’ fictional world and act as important transmedia sign-posts that guide viewers through Star Wars transmedia narrative towards texts (119.). In doing this he highlights how these characters have “been transformed and reimagined to fit the transmedia narrative at

4 The film was notorious upon release and has been largely disowned by fans, George Lucas, and Lucasfilm. Since it original broadcast in 1978 the film has never been re-broadcast or featured in an official home video release.

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different stages of its evolution […] while also acting as catalysts for new stories and franchising opportunities” (118).

Gerry Canavan discusses the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story5_{(2016) in order to}

argue that Disney’s purchase of Star Wars in 2012 represents an epistemic break for the franchise. While Star Wars remains Star Wars, after the sale to Disney he argues that “our relationship to it as a system of knowledge is entirely different” as Disney has “traded the epistemic certainty of the Lucas era for post-authorial, post-mythopoeic multiplicity of the post-Lucas Star Wars” (Canavan 277; 288). Canavan borrows the term episteme from Michel Foucault who defines it as a strategic apparatus that “defines the condition of possibility of all knowledge” (Foucault 183). Canavan argues that Lucas’ authorial vision of Star Wars had previously been treated as the franchise’s episteme. Since Disney’s takeover this epistemic certainty has been replaced by a more multi-faceted and multi-authored episteme that no longer is guided by a masterplan or singular vision. Canavan uses Rogue One, the first non-saga live-action theatrical film to analyse this by examining the way the film ‘sutures’ itself into George Lucas’ saga, and the way in which Disney marketed the film’s “multi-authored and highly contingent design process” (Canavan 283).

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CHAPTER 2:

SHARED CINEMATIC UNIVERSES AND

INTERTEXTUALITY

In this following section, I will lay out a theoretical model for understanding shared cinematic universes. I argue that they are a different process to transmedia storytelling, despite sharing many common traits. They importantly differ in that the former does not focus on a single story or narrative, but instead presents a fictional universe in which multiple stories can take place. I argue that they provide a model of structuring film franchises in which multiple film series can co-exist and interact with one another.

2.1 What is a Shared Cinematic Universe?

In using the term shared cinematic universes, I refer to large-scale, highly commercial projects that are centred around numerous (blockbuster) films. These projects are typically part of major media franchises, and created by Hollywood media conglomerates. Films in these projects often have a variety of narrative paratexts, such as comics, novels, video games, and television series released to coincide with them, thus giving shared cinematic universes a transmedia character. In the past decade, there has been a proliferation in this type of project, following the success of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008-); a collection of films, television series, and comics based on Marvel Comic’s stable of superheroes, which makes heavy use of crossover between characters. The scale of this project, which largely focuses on cinema, is unprecedented and has been met with commercial and critical success, quickly becoming the highest-grossing film series of all time.

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Its financial success has led to Disney’s rival studios attempting to mimic this model, to varying degrees of success with projects, such as Warner Bros.’ DC Extended Universe (2013-present) and Monsterverse (2014-(2013-present), Universal’s ill-fated Dark Universe (2017-present), and Paramount Pictures’ Transformers (2007-present). Some of these projects have been conceived of from the outset as shared cinematic universes; however, some of them are pre-existing film series that have been restructured in order to more closely ape Marvel’s model.

In a shared cinematic universe, the most important narratives are always found in cinematic texts. Alongside these cinematic texts, the fictional world is expanded via narrative paratexts, such as novels, comics, and video games that augment the fictional universe with new information and details. However, these paratexts do little in terms of narrative progression, which takes place almost exclusively in cinematic texts. This differs to the way in which narratives are dispersed across mediums in transmedia storytelling. In shared cinematic universes, narrative paratexts largely ‘fill in’ gaps in the narrative that are left by the cinematic texts. These consist of stories, such as detailing the activities of a character in-between films, an origin story for a character that takes place prior to the film(s) in which they appear, or peripheral stories that have little temporal or spatial connection with the films often focusing on characters that are exclusive to that specific text. These paratexts do little to propel the film’s narrative forward, and feature relatively self-contained narratives that are resolved within a single text, and do not continue into cinematic instalments in meaningful ways. Despite adding little in terms of narrative progression, these paratexts do add to the lore of the fictional world, thus further augmenting it. Like transmedia narratives, shared cinematic universes differ from franchising, in that they have a narratively coherent storyworld, narrative texts in a shared cinematic universe do not contradict one another.

Shared cinematic universes have a high degree of serialisation, which is one of the reasons that they can continue to expand. In many ways, shared cinematic universes are similar to standard film series in that they have one film followed by a sequel; however, a key difference is that they can support multiple film series, which exist alongside and interact with one another. This differs to a standard film series, which are generally chronologically linear, with prequels and sequels expanding the series timeline beyond a film into the past or future. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are multiple film series

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that are based upon specific characters such as Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. Each of these characters have multiple films that are based around their own personal arcs and are focused on the individual character. Despite existing as part of a shared cinematic universe, these groups of films can be considered film series in their own right. In addition to these film series, there is also the crossover film series The Avengers (2012-present), in which multiple characters from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe appear, including Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. Character crossover and spin-offs focusing on a single or a select few of the universe’s characters, is a staple of shared cinematic universes. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this is a widespread practice, for instance the character Tony Stark/Iron Man has appeared in Captain America: Civil War (2016), Spiderman: Homecoming (2017), his own series of films, and all of the films in the Avengers series. In Star Wars this is handled slightly differently, seeing as main characters are introduced in saga films that feature ensemble casts, as opposed to Marvel’s model where important characters are typically introduced in their own films, before appearing in other character’s films series or teaming up in The Avengers series.

What has happened so far in Star Wars, is that characters from the saga films have gone on to appear in anthology films, such as Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)6_{and Rogue}

One. These films feature both original characters and characters from across the saga films, such as Han Solo, Darth Maul, and Chewbacca in the former, and Princess Leia, Governor Wilhuff Tarkin, and Darth Vader in the latter. The use of this type of crossover, is a key difference between transmedia storytelling and shared cinematic universes; in transmedia storytelling, crossover does not exist in the same way as all characters belong to the same overarching narrative. Each text in a transmedia narrative contributes to the same overall narrative, whereas in a shared cinematic universe there are multiple disparate stories, and thus, there is the potential for characters to appear in a crossover capacity in stories that are not focused upon them. For example, the character Samuel Wilson/Falcon appears primarily in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Captain America and Avengers series of films, as Steve Rogers/Captain America’s sidekick. He also appears briefly in a scene in Ant Man (2015), in this scene there is no progression in terms of Wilson’s narrative arc that features in the film series in which he typically appears, he is featured in an entirely separate story. Crossover is

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enabled due to the shared cinematic universe’s ability to house multiple stories that are distinct, yet can interact with one another.

In certain ways, shared cinematic universes function similarly to television shows that feature a mixture of ‘villain of the week’ episodes and episodes that further ongoing narrative arcs in the series. ‘Villain of the week’ episodes refer to episodes that feature a self-contained story, which typically revolves around combating a one-off villain that does not appear in further episodes. Though popularly termed villain of the week episodes, the episode does not necessarily have to have a villain, what is important is that the episode features a self-contained story that does not or only minimally affects the television series’ overall narrative development. Examples of television shows that have a format that mixes villain of the week episodes, with episodes that forward narrative development are Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), The X-Files (1993-2002) and Doctor Who (1963-present). In shared cinematic universes, there are films which are relatively self-contained and feature little overall development of pre-existing narrative arcs, the focus is instead on a self-contained story that revolves around a villain or adversary, that is defeated by the film’s closure. Although these films will most likely connect with other films, and provide at least some development of the series’ overall narrative arcs, these developments are relatively minor in comparison to other films where narrative progression is the main focus. For instance, Rogue One is a standalone film in the Star Wars franchise, while the film does connect to the saga films, the main focus of the film is on a single event that is resolved by the end of the film. Rogue One is limited in its narrative progression, the outcome of the key narrative events of the film were already known to fans of the series decades prior to the film’s release. The film is concerned with a group of rebels’ attempt to steal the blueprints of the Galactic Empire’s Death Star space station in a mission that takes place immediately prior to the events of Episode IV: A New Hope. In the beginning of Episode IV: A New Hope, it is revealed that a mission by the Rebel Alliance to steal the blueprints for the Death Star was successful. This renders any narrative progression in Rogue One as largely insignificant, the outcome of the mission shown in the film was known decades prior to the film’s release. The main goal of the film is to show ‘how’ the blueprints were stolen, and fill in the narrative gap created in Episode IV: A New Hope, rather than to let the audience ‘know’ that they happened. This differs to the saga films, wherein the stories presented are not as self-contained, and the narrative from one film bleeds into the next film in the series. It is

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important to note however, that this is not always the case as there are large temporal gaps between the three trilogies. While each of the three films in a trilogy will feature a coherent narrative that picks up where the last film ends, this is not the case when going from one trilogy to the next. The events of Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983), take place approximately thirty years prior to Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), because of this large temporal gap, and the necessary introduction of new characters in the latter, the two films do not temporally connect with one another in the same way that Episode VII: The Force Awakens and Episode VIII: The Last Jedi do. In which the latter begins immediately after the former ends.

2.2 Intertextuality in Shared Cinematic Universes

Like transmedia storytelling, shared cinematic universes also make heavy use of intertextuality in their texts. In both transmedia storytelling and shared cinematic universes, an understanding of one text will shape the way that the consumer understands other texts within the franchise; both, make heavy use of this type of internal intertextuality between other texts in the franchise. However, it is also common for transmedia storytelling and shared cinematic universes to rely on intertextuality to external sources. Of the instances of transmedia storytelling and shared cinematic universes mentioned in this paper, almost all of them are adaptations of pre-existing material: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice; the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe are both based on characters that originated in comics; the Dark Universe and Monsterverse are based on classic literary and film characters; while the Transformers series is adapted from a television series that itself was adapted from a popular line of Hasbro toys. All of these examples feature an intertextual connection to their original source materials, that helps to shape the way viewers read them. The only two franchises discussed that were not adapted from pre-existing texts, are Star Wars and The Matrix. These two franchises however, are rife with intertextual references to other popular conventions and texts. As Jenkins notes, The Matrix borrows endlessly from popular culture, literary texts, mythology, religion, genre elements, and philosophy (2006 98-99). Likewise, Star Wars has

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long been noted for its intertextuality due to the way it ‘borrowed’ elements from films, genres, and mythology (Collins 1-2). In their intertextual references to external texts, shared cinematic universes and transmedia narratives operate fairly similarly, relying on adapting pre-existing material or creating original stories that rely heavily on pastiche in order to encourage audience response. Umberto Eco argues for a film to become a ‘cult film’, it must be possible to “break it up or take it apart”, and it should not “display a central idea but many” (4). It is important for both transmedia storytelling and shared cinematic universes to become ‘cult’ objects, as fans must be invested in them enough that they want to explore them further. If a consumer sees an initial text but is not engaged with it, they are unlikely to continue exploring the narrative or world through consumption of further texts. Thus, sparking consumer curiosity through creating layers of intertextuality is an important way in which transmedia storytelling and shared cinematic universes maintain consumer engagement.

The key way in which shared cinematic universes and transmedia storytelling differ, with regards to intertextuality, is the way in which texts connect and refer to other texts within the series. In transmedia storytelling, texts on less prominent mediums such as comics, video games and short films connect very directly to those in more prominent mediums, as the narratives from all texts, regardless of medium, converge to create one interrelated story. Thus, in order to understand the entirety of the narrative, it is important to understand as many texts as possible, in as much detail as possible. In shared cinematic universes, while there are direct intertextual relations between the prominent and less prominent mediums, the relations function in a different way. While knowledge gained from less prominent texts do further understanding of a shared cinematic universe, they do not connect in a direct way in terms of narrative progression; these texts act to fill in temporal gaps and expand the fictional world.

Texts in the more prominent mediums of shared cinematic universes and transmedia storytelling operate differently in terms of how they interact with one another. Transmedia narratives have a relative linearity between texts that are featured in their dominant medium. The Matrix functions akin to a fairly standard film series, in the way that the films follow each other. The films follow a traditional three-act structure: in the first film, the fictional setting and characters are established, and the main character Neo goes through a process of awakening. In the second, Neo learns the skills that he needs to resolve the

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conflict, and the viewer is given new information about the narrative. In the final film, the conflict reaches its most intense point and is finally resolved. The films follow each other narratively, and require the viewer to have seen the preceding film in order to fully comprehend them. In shared cinematic universes, these types of texts function differently as there are much more of them and their relations are often much weaker. Because of this, the primary texts of a shared cinematic universe often require more media consumption on behalf of the viewer in order to be properly understood. Avengers Infinity War (2018) is a crossover film that features characters introduced across the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s eighteen previously released films. Due to the large cast and crossover nature of the film, the film picks up numerous narrative threads from many of the franchise’s preceding films. While not required to have seen all of the preceding films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to gain a basic understanding of the film’s plot, the consumer will have to have at least a working knowledge of multiple films in order to understand why the film begins at this point. In order to fully understand the film, the viewer will have had to have seen all of the preceding films. This differs to a film in a standard film series, in which the viewer will only have to have seen the films in that particular film series in order to comprehend it. In shared cinematic universes, the viewer has to have an understanding of multiple overlapping film series to comprehend certain texts; the more films they have seen, the richer this comprehension becomes.

2.3 Concluding Remarks

One of the key differences between shared cinematic universes and transmedia storytelling is that the former focuses on creating a whole universe that can be populated by multiple stories, while the latter focuses primarily on a single story that is told over multiple texts. Furthermore, while there is supposedly no dominant medium in a transmedia narrative, in shared cinematic universes, films are always the most important medium in terms of distribution of narrative. This makes narrative paratexts in shared cinematic universes of lesser importance from the perspective of story progression when compared to their use in transmedia narratives. These paratexts in shared cinematic universes are a way of attempting to further expand the fictional world as opposed to creating an interconnected story that takes place over multiple texts. Despite their differences, there are also similarities between the two practices; they both feature stories that are told over multiple

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texts and mediums that encourage their fans to consume as much content as possible. Similarly, they tend to have types of stories that become ‘cult texts’, as these are useful in maximising fan engagement, which leads to higher levels of media consumption. The reasons for maximising fan consumptions of texts are different between the two practices. In transmedia storytelling, it is to tell a story where consumers must follow the story across multiple texts, while in shared cinematic universes the goal is expansion of the universe so that further stories can be added. Shared cinematic universes could in theory expand infinitely and support an unlimited number of stories and texts, the more popular they become and the more engaged their audience, the more stories and texts they can support. This ability to contain multiple stories is where the ‘shared’ in shared cinematic universes comes from. The fictional universe must be shared between multiple distinct stories and characters, unlike in transmedia storytelling, which, while containing a fictional universe, does not have multiple stories.

CHAPTER 3:

AUTHORSHIP AND SHARED CINEMATIC UNIVERSES

In this chapter, attention turns towards Star Wars as it is run by Disney as an example of a shared cinematic universe. The focus is on industrial and production practices utilised by Disney in creating and expanding the Star Wars franchise particularly in regards to authorship of cinematic texts. This is done in order to show how shared cinematic universes have utilised different authorship and production practices to those which are used in transmedia narratives.

3.1 The Human Bible and Narrative Committees

As has been previously discussed, there has been a tendency for transmedia narratives to be sold as the creative vision of a singular world-builder. Jenkins’ given example of The Matrix franchise was very much sold as the work of The Wachowskis, the sibling screenwriters, producers, and directors that conceived of the franchise and directed and wrote the film’s three feature films. Alongside their work on the cinematic texts of the franchise, the Wachowskis were also heavily involved in the development of a number of the franchise’s other texts, such as entries into the series of comics, The Animatrix, and Enter the Matrix.

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Many of these texts were produced using practices of co-creation between the Wachowskis’, who offered guidance and advice on keeping the franchise narratively and aesthetically coherent, and numerous animators, videogame designers, and comic-book writers that already had cult-followings and distinctive authorial voices (Jenkins 2006 109). Despite this collaboration between numerous creative personnel, the Wachowskis presence on numerous projects was still heavily emphasised. For example, the front cover art for Enter the Matrix carries the phrase “written and directed by the Wachowski Brothers” directly underneath the title. This is an unusual practice; video game writers and directors generally take up a relatively anonymous public role when compared to their film and television counterparts and it is highly irregular for front cover art to highlight the games’ author(s). Typically, the only marks of authorship on box art are the logos of the games’ developer and publisher. Highlighting the authorial presence of the Wachowskis has the effect of elevating the video game to the level of the film as it is presented as the work of the same singular world-builders. The authorial mark of the Wachowski’s, which is present in the promotional material for many of the franchise’s texts is an important way in which the series was presented as unified from an authorial perspective.

In many ways, The Wachowskis’ role in the series was similar to that of the television showrunner, which has become an increasingly important in modern television production. The Wachowskis were important creative personnel that had final say on the direction that the series took narratively and stylistically, and they also were the series’ most prominent behind-the-camera figures in public; however, they also worked in a highly collaborative environment and were not involved in the day-to-day production of all aspects of the franchise. For example, The Animatrix (2003), a collection of short animated films, featured numerous directors and writers from the Japanese anime industry. While the Wachowskis’ did help to write certain stories for the collection, they did not author all of them and did not direct any of them. This role apes that of the showrunner who also does not usually write and direct all episodes of a television series, but helps to oversee the entire series while delegating responsibilities to a wide range of personnel. Also like many showrunners the Wachowskis’ function as ‘human bibles’ of the series, this is the overarching authority that create and shape the foundational knowledge of the series (Caldwell 16). Effectively, they have the power to shape canon and to many fans it is their interpretations of the series

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that is most important, drawing on “romanticized conceptions of the author as divine presence” (Lomax 37).

In shared cinematic universes, there is generally not a single writer or director that acts as a showrunner-type figure that is presented as the series’ “bible”. Prior to 2012, Lucas held this role in the Star Wars series; it was decided officially by Lucasfilm that his ideas and authorship represented the highest level of canon thus granting him the ability to retcon any prior texts including his own. Since Lucas has left the series in 20147_{this ‘bible’ function has}

been taken over by the Lucasfilm Story Group, a committee of Lucasfilm employees that is in charge of the Star Wars canon and functions partially as a development team (Lomax 46). Unlike Lucas, they are not creative personnel and do not have traditional creative roles such as writer, director or game designer. Their primary job is to chronicle all of the texts in the Star Wars franchise and make sure that the universe is narratively coherent. As opposed to Lucas’ leadership of the canon, where he would routinely retcon and undermine the canonicity of texts, the Lucasfilm Story Group’s role is to attempt to maintain canonicity across all texts and prevent texts from undermining each other, thus their authorial power is more limited than Lucas’. Their work takes place mainly behind the scenes, consulting authors of texts, to make sure that their work narratively coheres to all the other texts in the franchise. Their role seems to be somewhat akin to editors reviewing the work of authors and creative personnel in order to prevent discrepancies as well as guide them in creating links between other texts; however, they are not themselves story developers and do not tell authors the specific stories they must tell (Greene N.p.).

Importantly, the members of the story group are not presented as important public figures in promoting the series instead they take largely anonymous roles, unlike Lucas. The members of the committee are known, and some do have social media presences and feature in occasional interviews. However, they are not used to promote texts to the same degree that Lucas was or actors, directors and screenwriters currently are. This means that while they perform the role of the ‘bible’ they are not public bibles like Lucas was. They function as bibles for the benefit of the creative personnel working on the series, rather than for the series’ fans. This has the effect that the importance of their views and 7 After the sale to Disney, it was announced that Lucas would work as a creative consultant and provide rough story treatments on Episodes VII-IX; however, it was later reported that these were discarded by Disney and not used in the films (Chitwood N.p.).

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interpretations are less important than Lucas’ was, as they do not have visible authorial voices. The lack of publicity afforded to the story group also helps to place emphasise on the texts and the people who worked on them rather than on a god-like world-builder’s view and interpretation of them. This has the effect of legitimising the authors and creative personnel who worked on them whose vision, is no longer compared to the human bible figure. Similarly, the fact that the committee is formed of eleven members instead of having a singular presence like author figures, such as Lucas or the Wachowskis, means that there is not a single person whose ideas are elevated to the divine. Shared cinematic universe’s benefit from having an anonymised committee in charge rather than a public writer/director as they become so big that a single person cannot act as a bible without running the risk of contradicting the work of other texts in the series.

3.2 The Studio Executive Showrunner

Alongside, his role as the ‘human bible’, Lucas also acted in a number of creative roles across Star Wars such as “director, screenwriter, story developer, producer, editor, and post-production supervisor” (Lomax 35). Lucas was also a studio executive due to his role as CEO and chairman of Lucasfilm, and also had a media presence as the main spokesperson for the series. Lucas’ prevalence in the film series was extremely wide-ranging and his many roles and importance make him similar to a showrunner in many ways, he was the person considered the ultimate authorial voice of the series. Similar to a showrunner, Lucas was not the screenwriter or director of all of the films in the series. For some films Lucasfilm hired others to perform these duties though Lucas was still involved in the story development of all films. Since his departure from the series, there has not been a singular replacement for Lucas, instead his numerous roles and duties have been divided among many different personnel. The example of the ‘human bible’ above now becoming an anonymised committee is one way in which his roles have been split; however, the committee are not akin to showrunners in the same way that Lucas was.

Television, showrunners are effectively writers and producers, whose latter role means they are “synonymous with […] brand managers that oversee major, non-entertainment brands like Coca-Cola and Ford Motor” (Mann 99). Modern television

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showrunners are not only creative personnel, but they also have important leadership duties in the show’s promotion via their role as a spokesperson and must also help in overseeing the creation of promotional transmedia content (Mann 100). Transmedia content in projects based around film differ heavily in scale to those of television; while in television it is common for there to be a few tie-in novels, websites, viral campaigns, mobile games and comics; film-centred projects can have tie-in television shows and a much larger number of video games, comics and films. Mann argues that in modern blockbuster-television projects, showrunners are publically presented as running everything from the writer’s room to the actual filming, though in reality this is not the case and the role of showrunner has been divided behind the scenes between numerous executive producers (ibid.). Despite this, numerous blockbuster television productions over the past decade, such as Game of Thrones (2011-Present), Breaking Bad (2008-2013), Strangers Things (2016-Present), Sense8 (2015-Present) and Black Mirror (2011-Present), have continued to have easily identifiable showrunners that are publically privileged above other staff on the series regardless of their actual hands-on role.

In Star Wars, there is no longer an easily identifiable figure who works as a showrunner in the same way that Lucas did prior to his departure from the series. There have so far been four films released by Disney: two saga films and two anthology films. These films have all had different directors and screenwriters with little continuity in crew between the films. The only major member of the crew to have worked on all three films is Kathleen Kennedy, Lucas’ replacement as the president of Lucasfilm, who acts as a producer on all Star Wars films. Kennedy is the closest the series currently has to a showrunner, in that she is the most powerful consistent figure in the development of the film series. Two of Kennedy’s main duties are responsibility over the hiring (and firing8_{) of writers and directors}

and overseeing the general direction of the films’ overarching narratives. Despite, this she is generally not seen as a creative figure in the same way that screenwriters and directors and traditional showrunners are, but rather as a studio executive.

Kennedy’s role is relatively unique, in that there are few examples of a studio president whose studio focuses only on a single major franchise. The only major precursor 8 Two upcoming films have had directorial changes initiated by Kennedy: Solo, originally had Phil Lord and Christopher Miller as directors who were replaced by Ron Howard during filming, while Colin Trevorrow was initially hired to direct Episode IX (2019) though has since been replaced by Episode VII: The Force Awakens’ director J. J. Abrams.