So where does Kathleen fall? She's the president, but she's also functions as an Executive Producer.
At that level, with her experience; she'll likely EP anything she wants.
And I'll guess 95% of the time she's a no-show because there's an hierarchy of producers underneath her doing most of the leg work.
On her EP hit list is probably daily staff, cast, budget and logistics updates from pre, post and in-production crews. So anything related to the making of content.
On her President hit list is probably Disney board meetings, marketing and merchandising meetings, meeting with other studios (like Paramount for Indy V, for example). So anything related with the division she runs within the Disney empire and LFL's business dealings outside of D.
A simplified ballpark breakdown, but that's my educated guess.
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A simplified example>
You're a bankable writer and director with a SW script for a feature.
Your agent sends the script to KK, she returns saying she likes it and wants to meet with you.
Your agent sets up a meeting with LFL (at that level you'd meet directly with KK and her producing circle).
The meet goes well, things move forward.
As President, she and her LFL executives will determine and clear a budget and a target release date for your feature.
As EP, she, along with other EPs and Producers and you, the Director, will be directly accountable for how that budget is spent, and will make sure the project wraps on schedule. As EP she'll make sure you're surrounded with the Producers and Line Producers and ADs and an entire crew best suited for the project you wrote and pitched. She knows it all because she has been doing this for decades - and she's been one of the best at it.
Once the project wraps, she'll oversee marketing, advertising, test-screening and potential release date changes. This may apply to different release dates in different territories.
There's a lot more to this (contract negotiations with talent and unions, ego management, crisis management, etc), but that's how her role would
kinda play out if you were making a feature for LFL.
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K used to be a person to be trusted in making sure that the projects she worked on made huge profits. She did that because she was (probably) good at reassuring Studio Presidents she used to work for, she was good at keeping everyone in-check throughout every stage of production, and she had the reciprocal trust of some of the biggest filmmakers in history (Spielberg, Zemeckis and Lucas (Indy)). She was one of the best
players in history.
Her becoming President of LFL is like a player becoming coach after retirement. Some succeed, some don't, regardless of how successful a player they were.
For a lot of us, we'd like to think that K has failed as a coach, because her coaching doesn't fall inline with how we see the game.
But the reality is that, in this business, only the bottom line decides if you're successful or not. And based on that dominant Hollywood criteria; K is one of the most successful coaches in history. We might not like how she wins those championships, but she and the Disney Board Members don't care. It's the unfairness of big-money business. It's been going on since before anyone here was born, and will go on long after we expire.
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