After almost fourteen years as the head of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from her role as President of the company and passing on her responsibilities to both Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan, who will each be co-presidents of the film studio. The news comes a few weeks after Star Wars Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling, wrapped production. Kennedy will remain the producer of that film and this year’s The Mandalorian and Grogu, but for all intents and purposes, a new era begins.
Her replacements are hardly green, though. Filoni, long seen as George Lucas’ protégé, has been serving as the Chief Creative Officer for the past few years (a title he also retains with this transition), while Brennan has been the president of Lucasfilm Business. Much like the arrangement over at DC Studios, with James Gunn and Peter Safran splitting responsibilities, one of the presidents will oversee more of the creative side of the studio, while the other will be more entrenched in the financials. Overall, it’s a good move.
I do have some reservations about Filoni as the head of Lucasfilm, that said. He very much likes to stay in his own wheelhouse and “Filoniverse”, very much to a fault, it seems. While I’ve liked everything he does, it would be nice to see him step away from his own creations and characters. One of the bigger problems that eventually bogged down The Mandalorian was that it felt like a sequel to The Clone Wars the longer it went on. The other major projects that involved him as a creative, Star Wars Rebels and Ahsoka, both feel like sequels or companions to TCW as well. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Andor creator Tony Gilroy spoke candidly about how Kathleen Kennedy had to protect both him and the show, and it was her who was pushing for the darker tone and stated, “for all the shit that she takes online, it’s just insane. This show exists because she forced it to happen. What a tough job she has, man.” I have no idea who they were protecting the Andor show from, but it suggests some sort of creative riff at the studio. But she was absolutely right to champion Andor.
Kennedy definitely has a spotty track record with her time at Lucasfilm, and saying she was great or terrible is ignoring both her faults and successes. As mentioned, Andor was a powerhouse success and arguably the best thing produced under her watch. She’s also been involved with some really fun and/or popular projects, whether they be The Mandalorian, which became a gargantuan hit, or Skeleton Crew, which I know didn’t have the same level of reach, but I would still recommend as a really fun watch. But there’s no denying that not having an outline for the Star Wars sequel trilogy was a fumble of epic proportions and resulted in diminishing box office returns. Say what you will about the films themselves, whether you love or hate them, but not being prepared for them as the president of a studio is baffling. Then there’s the non-Star Wars projects, like Indiana Jones and the Willow TV show, which either bombed at the box office or have been scrubbed from existence altogether, respectively (I, for one, didn’t mind the fifth Indiana Jones film; it wasn’t great, but nor was it bad. It was perfectly average).
There’s also the frustrating habit of announcing projects far too early, way before they have scripts in hand, and quite often those projects would get cancelled or abandoned years down the line due to inactivity. Taika Waititi’s film was announced in 2020, and we have no updates on what that film is about, for example, or anything about it really apart from it’s still being written. Hopefully, the new presidents will be more frugal with their announcements, only revealing something when it’s got a script, director and is about to enter pre-production. The studio did this with Starfighter, announcing it in 2025 for a 2027 release, so maybe they finally got the memo after all these years?
Kathleen Kennedy is one of the all-time great producers, though there’s no doubt about that. Just look at her credits. She’s been involved with a lot of Spielberg films, and produced everything from E.T. to Jurassic Park to Twister to War Horse. That’s not including her wildly impressive list of credits as an executive producer, which includes the likes of the Back to the Future trilogy, Cape Fear, and Schindler’s List. She’s got one helluva batting average. But being good at one thing doesn’t make you good for another, and it does seem like she struggled as a studio head. But she also took risks, and I think that should be commended. So let’s see how the next era of Star Wars turns out and see if the studio continues to take risks.