Arts and Culture

Kathleen Kennedy & Frank Marshall to be honored with an Oscar Wilde Award

Will Ferrell will present to John C. Reilly

January 31, 2025. Legendary film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will be honored at the US-Ireland Alliance’s 19thannual Oscar Wilde Awards which will be held on 27 February at the Ebell of Los Angeles.  

Previously announced honorees are actors John C.  Reilly and Éanna Hardwicke.  Also added to this year’s line-up is Will Ferrell, who will present Reilly with his award.  Among John and Will’s shared credits are Talladega Nights:  The Ballad of Ricky Bobby; Step Brothers; and Holmes and Watson.

Screen Ireland and Northern Ireland Screen are among the night’s sponsors.

US-Ireland Alliance founder Trina Vargo said, “the Irish are known as being great storytellers, and you can’t find two greater storytellers, in the history of filmmaking, than Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall.

Together, and individually, they have won and been nominated for numerous awards. Kennedy is the recipient of the Producers Guild of America Milestone Award and is an eight-time Academy Award nominee.  Frank is a five-time Academy Award nominee and together they received the Academy’s prestigious 2018 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, awarded to "creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.”

The pair met in 1979 when they were both working, with Steven Spielberg, on Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shortly thereafter, the trio formed industry powerhouse Amblin Entertainment, and together shared a Best Picture nomination for The Color Purple, and produced movies such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Gremlins, the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Goonies, Empire of the Sun, and all five films in the Indiana Jones series.  

Kennedy and Marshall went on to form the Kennedy/Marshall Company, where, from 1991 to 2012, they produced over 25 films, and garnered Best Picture nominations for The Sixth Sense, Seabiscuit, Munich, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Their productions also include Signs, Sully, War Horse, Lincoln, and all five films in the Jason Bourne series.

In 2012, Marshall took over as sole principal of the company when Kennedy became co-Chair, and subsequently President, of Lucasfilm. 

As President of Lucasfilm, Kennedy was the producer of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the highest grossing domestic feature of all time, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the number one grossing movie in 2016. She went on to produce Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the highest grossing movie worldwide in 2017, as well as Solo: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Kennedy has recently executive produced the Emmy Award-winning The Mandalorian series that launched the Disney+ platform as well as The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, Andor, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. She is currently producing all of Lucasfilm’s live action titles in production, including the upcoming Andor Season 2 and feature film The Mandalorian and Grogu. 

Kennedy has produced or executive produced more than 70 feature films, which have collectively garnered 120 Academy Award nominations and 25 wins. Among her credits: Jurassic Park, Poltergeist, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Schindler’s List, and The Adventures of Tintin.

Frank Marshall broadened The K/M slate beyond feature films to include television, documentaries and Broadway musicals. Those include the Jurassic World franchise, Orson Welles final film, The Other Side of The Wind, and the Emmy nominated documentaries Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, Laurel Canyon, McCartney, 3,2,1, and The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart. Most recently, he produced the Tony winning musical, A Strange Loop and the Grammy winning documentary, Jazzfest: A New Orleans Story. In addition to his prolific producing career, Marshall is also an accomplished director, having helmed Arachnophobia, Eight Below, Alive, Congo, and several documentaries, which have been nominated for six Emmys. Currently, he is producing this summer’s Jurassic World: Rebirth, directing documentaries about Fleetwood Mac and Barbra Streisand and has several Broadway projects in development.