A new year, a new rumor that Kathleen Kennedy will be stepping down as President of Lucasfilm. In 2012, George Lucas appointed the legendary producer to run Lucasfilm, shortly before he sold the company to Disney. For over a decade, Kathleen Kennedy has ushered in a new era for Star Wars with the sequel trilogy, spin-off films, and a push into streaming television with series like The Mandalorian and Andor. It has indeed had some highs, but also some lows, and over the years, to some (often entitled) fans, Kathleen Kennedy has become their public enemy number one.
A new report suggests that Kathleen Kennedy will step down as president of Lucasfilm in 2026 and be replaced by two people, one of whom is Star Wars fanboy favorite Dave Filoni. Now, this is not the first time a rumor about Kathleen Kennedy stepping down has emerged, only for it to be shut down. This same headline broke in February 2025, only for Kennedy to deny the rumors at Star Wars Celebration. So until Disney or Kennedy makes an official statement, this is just another rumor. However, the moment Kathleen Kennedy steps down from Lucasfilm will mark a notable shift in the franchise’s history, for better and worse.
Kathleen Kennedy’s Complicated Legacy
As is often the case on the internet, a career is painted in broad strokes with no nuance. Kathleen Kennedy’s legacy is often characterized as “a massive success” or, more often, “a complete disaster that ruined Star Wars.” Yet the truth is more in the middle.
Looking at the highs: Four of the five Star Wars films that have been released since she became President of Lucasfilm grossed over $1 billion, with both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi being the highest-grossing films of 2015 and 2017 at the domestic and worldwide box office. The sequel trilogy successfully relaunched the Star Wars franchise for a new generation, introducing new characters and worlds that fans have clearly grown attached to, given the outcry over Disney’s cancellation of The Hunt for Ben Solo. The move to streaming not only gave Star Wars one of its biggest commercial hits with The Mandalorian but also the critically acclaimed Andor, which many see as one of the best Star Wars stories ever told. Star Wars is now more present than it has ever been, with multiple entry points for viewers.
When it comes to lows, Kennedy’s regime has seen the first Star Wars flop with Solo. On the non-Star Wars side of things, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was also a notable box office flop for Disney. Many of the streaming series, like The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, not only missed the mark, but the sheer volume of output certainly made Star Wars feel less special and more like a mid-tier television franchise than the blockbuster movies they were meant to be. Kennedy also had notable problems with creatives behind the scenes, including requiring massive reshoots on both Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story, the latter of which was so bad that the original directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, were fired and replaced by Ron Howard.
Kennedy has come under fire for announcing many Star Wars projects that never materialized, which is a fair criticism but also one that ignores a few key details. One is that many of the announcements were forced on Kathleen Kennedy by Disney’s former CEO Bob Chapek, who wanted a steady stream of announcements in December 2020, regardless of whether a project was ready. While Kathleen Kennedy and Star Wars have brought on several filmmakers to develop Star Wars films, that is just part of the movie industry. Many films are in development that never make it off the ground or take years to come to fruition. If anything, the fact that they haven’t been rushed out shows that Kennedy has listened to the criticism of the sequel trilogy and wants each film to be ready to go, rather than pushing through just because the title was announced and needs to meet a release date.
Kennedy’s biggest legacy at Disney and Lucasfilm might be in how fans treat her. Kennedy is one of the greatest producers in Hollywood history, behind many classic films like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Twister, The Sixth Sense, and Lincoln, to name just a few. Before running Lucasfilm, she was a co-founder of Amblin Pictures and helped oversee movies like Back to the Future, The Goonies, Gremlins, and Schindler’s List. She is such a great producer that both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have spoken highly of her and brought her on to key projects, because they trusted her. Despite being associated with some of the greatest movies of all time, Star Wars fans seem to look at her tenure at Lucasfilm and portray her as a hack, highlighting the negative aspects while ignoring or downplaying the commercial and critical success she has had.
The wins in Star Wars are attributed to other individuals, like Tony Gilroy, Jon Favreau, and Dave Filoni, while all the negative aspects are put solely at her feet. It shows the short-sighted nature of fandom. It is worth noting that Star Wars fans are not a monolith. While some did not like Kathleen Kennedy’s risk as an executive, others did. So her tenure is a complicated one, not without hits and misses, like every successful figure in Hollywood.
Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan Will Take Control… But Are They Qualified?
With Kathleen Kennedy seemingly stepping down from Lucasfilm, who will take her place? Instead of the previous one-person leadership model at Marvel Studios under Kevin Feige, Disney is taking a page from DC Studios for the future of Lucasfilm, with it having co-presidents. The rumored new heads of Lucasfilm are Dave Filoni, the current Chief Creative Officer, and Lynwen Brennan, the current President and General Manager of Lucasfilm Business. Filoni will seemingly take on James Gunn’s role as the creative producer, while Brennan will handle the business side of the company, similar to Peter Safran.
Dave Filoni has often been cited as George Lucas’ protégée, and for nearly twenty years has seemingly been molded to be the new leader of Lucasfilm by Kathleen Kennedy herself. In 2020, he was promoted to executive creative director for Lucasfilm, and then in 2023, he was promoted to Chief Creative Officer. Beginning in animation with Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Filoni helped flesh out Star Wars with the first Disney era title, Star Wars: Rebels. Filoni would then become a key collaborator with Jon Favreau on The Mandalorian, and together the two would map out what many fans dub “The Mandoverse,” a series of connected stories including The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew, and the upcoming The Mandalorian & Grogu that will culminate in an Avengers-style team-up film.
While Filoni has his strengths as a writer, helping flesh out elements of the Star Wars mythology and tying elements together into a cohesive whole, he also has some notable weaknesses. Many are best exemplified in Ahsoka, the series in which he was the most creatively involved as creator, executive producer, and sole writer. Filoni is still new to live-action filmmaking, and Ahoska suffers from stiff acting and direction that feels straight out of the wooden delivery of the Star Wars prequels. Filoni’s emphasis on lore that pleases long-term fans often comes at the expense of alienating casual fans, which has helped make Star Wars into a global phenomenon. While Kathleen Kennedy might not have been a die-hard Star Wars fan, she knew what worked as a movie and distilled some of Star Wars’ dense mythology into something that was easy for any audience to understand.
Thankfully, Filoni won’t be doing this alone. Bringing on Lynwen Brennan, who was President of Industrial Light and Magic in 2009 and, since 2015, has been the Executive Vice President of Lucasfilm as General Manager for all the company’s divisions, is a safe contingency plan. Brennan’s business savvy might serve as a nice counter to Filoni’s more fanboy indulgences. Filoni can make material that Brennan can clearly sell and market to Star Wars fans. At the same time, Brennan can help distill Filoni’s ideas into more accessible storytelling, so Star Wars does not become too insular. It seems like a solid pairing and one that could usher Star Wars into a new, safe era. But is that a good thing?
Will Star Wars Lose Its Creative Risk?
For all the criticism that Kathleen Kennedy’s Disney-era Star Wars has played it safe, it is hard to argue that the producer didn’t take some major creative swings that might be lost under new leadership. Kennedy might not have always given fans what they “wanted,” but sometimes what they didn’t know they needed, and that kept Star Wars interesting. The Last Jedi might have divided some fans in an online discourse war that is still raging to this day, but it did push Star Wars into a new creative direction and challenged notions of what the franchise could be in a film many consider to be one of the best films in the franchise. Kennedy took a chance on a creative like Lesley Headland and The Acolyte, and while the series was ultimately canceled, it was a bold swing for Star Wars that called to mind George Lucas’s prequels. Will Dave Filoni take a chance on a mature series like Andor? One that favors emotional depth for Easter eggs and trying to recreate the feeling of Star Wars? It is too early to tell.
Between the sequel trilogy to the High Republic publishing initiative and the streaming era, Kathleen Kennedy’s tenure as the President of Lucasfilm has been a fascinating ride. It might not have always been pretty, but it was an exciting time to be a Star Wars fan. It is kind of sad to think it is over. Yet her influence on the franchise will never leave, as generations of fans who grew up with the sequel trilogy or The Mandalorian will be living in a post-Kathleen Kennedy Star Wars world.
While many might be critical of it now, there might come a time when fans look back nostalgically on Kathleen Kennedy’s Star Wars era. Think that’s impossible? Remember, it wasn’t until Kathleen Kennedy and the sequel trilogy that George Lucas and the controversial prequel era were looked back on with fondness.
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