After more than 13 years at the helm of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from the \u201cStar Wars\u201d factory founded by George Lucas.<\/p>\n
The Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday that it will now turn to Dave Filoni to steer \u201cStar Wars,\u201d 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 one of the movies marquee franchises, alongside Lynwen Brennan, president and general manager of Lucasfilm\u2019s businesses, who will serve as co-president.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen George Lucas asked me to take over Lucasfilm upon his retirement, I couldn\u2019t have imagined what lay ahead,\u201d said Kennedy. \u201cIt has been a true privilege to spend more than a decade working alongside the extraordinary talent at Lucasfilm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy, Lucas\u2019 handpicked successor, had presided over the ever-expanding science-fiction world of \u201cStar Wars\u201d since Disney acquired it in 2012. In announcing Thursday\u2019s news, Bob Iger, chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Co. called her \u201ca visionary filmmaker.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kennedy oversaw a highly lucrative but often contentious period in \u201cStar Wars\u201d history that yielded a blockbuster trilogy and acclaimed streaming spinoffs such as \u201cThe Mandalorian\u201d and \u201cAndor,\u201d yet found increasing frustration from longtime fans.<\/p>\n
Under Kennedy\u2019s stewardship, Lucasfilm amassed more than $5.6 billion in box office and helped establish Disney+ as a streaming destination \u2014 achievements that easily validated the $4.05 billion 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 \u201cStar Wars\u201d loyalists became a saga of its own.<\/p>\n
Filoni has established himself almost entirely on the small screen, entering the franchise with the animated series \u201cStar Wars: The Clone Wars\u201d and creating the tepidly received Disney+ series \u201cAhsoka.\u201d Filoni, who first collaborated with Lucas on \u201cAvatar: The Last Airbender,\u201d has also been an executive producer on \u201cThe Mandalorian,\u201d \u201cThe Book of Boba Fett\u201d and \u201cSkeleton Crew.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both will report to Alan Bergman, Disney Entertainment co-chairman.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom Rey to Grogu, Kathy has overseen the greatest expansion in Star Wars storytelling on-screen that we have ever seen,\u201d said Filoni. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before joining Lucasfilm, Kennedy was one of Hollywood\u2019s most successful producers ever. In 1981, she co-founded Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg and her eventual husband, Frank Marshall. She produced \u201cE.T.,\u201d \u201cIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,\u201d \u201cJurassic Park\u201d and the \u201cBack to the Future\u201d trilogy.<\/p>\n
At Lucasfilm, her biggest hit came at the start, with 2015\u2019s \u201cStar Wars: The Force Awakens.\u201d The J.J. Abrams-directed film grossed more than $2 billion worldwide. But the subsequent installment, Rian Johnson\u2019s \u201cThe Last Jedi\u201d (2017), was bitterly divisive. The third film, Abrams\u2019 \u201cThe Rise of Skywalker\u201d (2019), was widely panned by critics and fans, alike.<\/p>\n
After \u201cThe Rise of Skywalker,\u201d \u201cStar Wars\u201d 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\u2019s \u201cThe Mandalorian & Grogu.\u201d The intervening years have been marked by streaming successes in \u201cThe Mandalorian\u201d and \u201cAndor,\u201d but the future of \u201cStar Wars\u201d has felt increasingly uncertain.<\/p>\n
Struggles over tone and vision have been frequent. The 2018 Han Solo spinoff \u201cSolo: A Star Wars Story\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
More recently, Adam Driver, who played Kylo Ren\/Ben Solo in the most recent \u201cStar Wars\u201d trilogy,\u201d divulged to The Associated Press last year that he and Steven Soderbergh had developed a Ben Solo film with Kennedy and Lucasfilm\u2019s support for two years before Disney chief Bob Iger nixed it. Fans were so irate that a plane was flown over Disney\u2019s Burbank studios with a banner reading \u201cSave \u2018The Hunt for Ben Solo.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, the only \u201cStar Wars\u201d movie of Kennedy\u2019s stewardship to win widespread and prevailing approval from fans was arguably 2016\u2019s \u201cRogue One.\u201d Gareth Edwards\u2019 spinoff was also a troubled production, leading to Tony Gilroy, eventual creator of \u201cAndor,\u201d overseeing reshoots. Yet despite that, \u201cRogue One\u201d \u2014 taking place within \u201cStar Wars\u201d but outside of the main Jedi storyline \u2014 might be the only film of Kennedy\u2019s \u201cStar Wars\u201d reign that managed to both stay true to the space odyssey\u2019s tone and to break new ground.<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s fingerprints will be on many of coming \u201cStar Wars\u201d projects for years to come. That includes Shawn Levy\u2019s \u201cStar Wars: Starfighter,\u201d with Ryan Gosling, due out in May 2027, and a fleet of other projects in various stages of development.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source triblive.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After more than 13 years at the helm of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from the \u201cStar Wars\u201d factory founded by George Lucas. The Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday that it will now turn to Dave Filoni to steer \u201cStar Wars,\u201d as president and chief creative officer, into its sixth decade and beyond. Filoni, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2237029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2237028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Kathleen-Kennedy-steward-of-\u2018Star-Wars-steps-down-from-Lucasfilm.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2237028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2237030,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237028\/revisions\/2237030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2237029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2237028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2237028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2237028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}