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After more than 13 years at the helm of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from the Star Wars factory founded by George Lucas.
The Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday that it will now turn to Dave Filoni to steer Star Wars, as president and chief creative officer, into its sixth decade and beyond.
Filoni, who served as the chief commercial officer of Lucasfilm, will inherit the mantle of a marquee franchise, alongside Lynwen Brennan, president and general manager of Lucasfilm’s businesses, who will serve as co-president.
“When George Lucas asked me to take over Lucasfilm upon his retirement, I couldn’t have imagined what lay ahead,” said Kennedy.
“It has been a true privilege to spend more than a decade working alongside the extraordinary talent at Lucasfilm.”
Oversaw expansion of Star Wars universe
Kennedy, Lucas’s handpicked successor, had presided over the ever-expanding science-fiction world of Star Wars since Disney acquired it in 2012. In announcing Thursday’s news, Bob Iger, chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Co. called her “a visionary filmmaker.”
Kennedy oversaw a highly lucrative but often contentious period in Star Wars history that yielded a blockbuster trilogy and acclaimed streaming spinoffs, such as The Mandalorian and Andor, yet found increasing frustration from longtime fans.
Under Kennedy’s stewardship, Lucasfilm amassed more than $5.6 billion US at the box office and helped establish Disney+ as a streaming destination — achievements that easily validated the $4.05 billion US Disney plunked down for the company.
But Kennedy also struggled to deliver the big-screen magic that Lucas captured in the original trilogy from the late 1970s and early 1980s, and her relationship with Star Wars loyalists became a saga of its own.
Filoni has established himself almost entirely on the small screen, entering the franchise with the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and creating the tepidly received Disney+ series Ahsoka. Filoni, who first collaborated with Lucas on Avatar: The Last Airbender, has also been an executive producer on The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and Skeleton Crew.
Both will report to Alan Bergman, Disney Entertainment co-chairman.
“From Rey to Grogu, Kathy has overseen the greatest expansion in Star Wars storytelling on-screen that we have ever seen,” said Filoni.
“I am incredibly grateful to Kathy, George, Bob Iger and Alan Bergman for their trust and the opportunity to lead Lucasfilm in this new role, doing a job I truly love. May the force be with you.”
Blockbusters before Star Wars
Before joining Lucasfilm, Kennedy was one of Hollywood’s most successful producers. In 1981, she co-founded Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg and her eventual husband, Frank Marshall. She produced E.T., Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Jurassic Park and the Back to the Future trilogy.
At Lucasfilm, her biggest hit came at the start, with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The J.J. Abrams-directed film grossed more than $2 billion US worldwide. But the subsequent instalment, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi (2017), was bitterly divisive. The third film, Abrams’s The Rise of Skywalker (2019), was widely panned by critics and fans alike.
After The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars went dark on the big screen despite a litany of announced projects. The dry spell is set to be broken in May by Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian & Grogu.
The intervening years have been marked by streaming successes in The Mandalorian and Andor, but the future of Star Wars has felt increasingly uncertain.
Struggles over tone and vision have been frequent. The 2018 Han Solo spinoff Solo: A Star Wars Story saw its directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, fired during production and replaced by Ron Howard. Most found the mixed-and-matched result blandly disappointing.
More recently, Adam Driver, who played Kylo Ren/Ben Solo in the most recent Star Wars trilogy, divulged to The Associated Press last year that he and Steven Soderbergh had developed a Ben Solo film with Kennedy and Lucasfilm’s support for two years before Disney chief Bob Iger nixed it. Fans were so irate that a plane was flown over Disney’s Burbank studios with a banner reading “Save The Hunt for Ben Solo.”
Instead, the only Star Wars movie of Kennedy’s stewardship to win widespread and prevailing approval from fans was arguably 2016’s Rogue One. Gareth Edwards’s spinoff was also a troubled production, leading to Tony Gilroy, eventual creator of Andor, overseeing reshoots.
Yet despite that, Rogue One — taking place within Star Wars but outside of the main Jedi storyline — might be the only film of Kennedy’s reign that managed to both stay true to the space odyssey’s tone and to break new ground.
Kennedy’s fingerprints will be on many of the coming Star Wars projects for years to come. That includes Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter, with Ryan Gosling, due out in May 2027, and a fleet of other projects in various stages of development.
