Web Summit, the world’s largest technology event, has announced that Kathleen Kennedy will speak in Lisbon this November. Kennedy is the producer of E.T., Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. She has also been named by Vanity Fair as “the most powerful woman in Hollywood.”
Kennedy is an eight-time Academy Award nominee, the first woman to have received the Academy’s Thalberg Award, and the President of Lucasfilm. She will be in conversation with Rob Bredow, Executive Director and Head of Industrial Light & Magic, the American motion picture visual effects company founded in May 1975 by George Lucas.
The pair will address 70,000 attendees at Web Summit on the event’s Centre Stage. They will discuss the relationship of technology and storytelling, developments in film, and Kennedy’s illustrious career. They will also cover what role Industrial Light & Magic, lead by Bredow, has played in pioneering technology to deliver one of the world’s most successful franchises, Star Wars (1975), to the hugely anticipated Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, due for release this December.
In 2012, George Lucas handed over Lucasfilm to Kennedy to continue building the new era of Star Wars films, Star Wars trilogy: The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker, and Rogue One and Solo. Kennedy also co-founded Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall, the production company behind classics like Back to the Future, Men in Black and Jurassic Park. Her movies have made over $11bn in box offices worldwide, and include three of the highest box office grossing films in motion picture history.