Is Kathleen Kennedy’s Lucasfilm Exit A New Hope For ‘Star Wars’?

Kathleen Kennedy has stepped down as president of Lucasfilm effective immediately, Disney announced Thursday. She will be replaced by Lucasfilm veterans, Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan. Kennedy took over as the company chief when Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 for roughly $4.05 billion. Kennedy was hand-picked for the job by Star Wars creator, George Lucas.

“When George Lucas asked me to take over Lucasfilm upon his retirement, I couldn’t have imagined what lay ahead,” Kennedy said in a statement. “It has been a true privilege to spend more than a decade working alongside the extraordinary talent at Lucasfilm. Their creativity and dedication have been an inspiration, and I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together. I’m excited to continue developing films and television with both longtime collaborators and fresh voices who represent the future of storytelling.”

Kennedy’s tenure has been divisive, with both major box office hits in the sequel trilogy, and major backlash from the Star Wars fandom. The sequel trilogy – The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019) – earned approximately $4.48 billion worldwide, though each film made significantly less than the previous haul. Kennedy also oversaw the box office failure, Solo: A Star Wars Story, which led to a major hiatus from Star Wars theatrical releases.

On the television front, Kennedy helped launch the bevy of live-action Star Wars shows that have released since the debut of Disney+. Once again, some of these were huge hits with fans and audiences, such as The Mandalorian, while others struggled to justify their enormous budgets, with The Acolyte perhaps the most glaring (and controversial) disappointment.

While there is much to be critiqued about Kennedy’s decisions while head of Lucasfilm, she also greenlit the massively expensive Tony Gilroy project, Andor, which remains one of the best Star Wars entries since the original trilogy, earning rave reviews and a passionate following. (Despite its diverse cast, it also largely avoided criticism from cultural critics, suggesting that these culture war issues are often more complicated than the media makes them out to be when scolding fans over their purportedly regressive notions).

Forbes‘Andor’ Season 2 Review: A Masterpiece, Some Of The Best ‘Star Wars’ Ever MadeBy Erik Kain

Kennedy has been both praised and criticised for efforts to diversify Star Wars, and she found herself at the nexus of raging culture war debates – and, at one point, a character in an episode of South Park. Many of the arguments on both sides of the Star Wars culture war debate often fail to accurately, let alone rationally, assess the real issues with the direction Star Wars has gone since joining the House of Mouse.

Critics of Kennedy and Disney often fail to note the predicament a galaxy far, far away was in prior to the acquisition. The prequel films are often seen through rosy-tinted glasses now, decades later, but were a crushing disappointment for many fans of the original films. More than anything, Lucasfilm simply failed to produce much new Star Wars content at all outside of the animated Clone Wars series and Rebels, both projects spearheaded by Filoni, who will now serve as both co-president and Chief Creative Officer.

Still, there is much to critique. Kennedy oversaw the sequel trilogy, which began on a high-note with The Force Awakens but failed spectacularly to not only stick the landing, but create a cohesive trilogy. To me, this is by far the most perplexing shortcoming of Lucasfilm over the past 14 years. When George Lucas released Star Wars (1977), there was no guarantee that it would ever lead to more films. Nobody anticipated the massive success of the first film, and it’s very obvious that The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and The Return of the Jedi (1983) retconned certain details and made changes to create a more cohesive three-part film series.

When Disney took over and announced a sequel trilogy, all that Lucasfilm needed to do was outline a three-film roadmap with a beginning, middle and end. Instead, after The Force Awakens, not only the director but the entire story shifted radically when Rian Johnson took the helm for The Last Jedi. The backlash was so intense that J.J. Abrams returned to the director’s chair and released a film that seemed intent on reversing every story beat and thematic thread Johnson introduced in the previous film. The Rise of Skywalker was widely panned, and performed worse than either previous film at the box office.

On the television front, Disney and Lucasfilm, perhaps emboldened by the early success of The Mandalorian, simply bit off more than they could chew. Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Book of Boba Fett and other live-action series failed to generate the same level of buzz and struggled with slipping review scores and yet more audience backlash, culminating in the overwhelmingly negative reaction to The Acolyte. Indeed, it’s puzzling that the same studio that released these mediocre shows also released Andor.

A New Hope For Star Wars?

Kennedy’s departure from Lucasfilm’s top job – she remains a producer at the company – might signal a fresh start for Star Wars and a new hope for the space fantasy franchise. I would be wary of getting your hopes up too much, however, even if hope is what rebellions are made of.

Promoting longtime veterans suggests that Disney is largely happy with the direction Star Wars is headed. While Filoni has produced some terrific animated shows, this did not translate to live-action success with his Rebels sequel series, Ahsoka, which was yet another middling effort to bring Star Wars to the small screen.

While Filoni certainly has a vision for what Star Wars should be, this vision is largely wrapped up in the legacy of the prequel films and intrinsically bound to the animated Clone Wars series, with legacy characters like Ahsoka Tano, Sabine Wren, Ezra Bridger and Grand Admiral Thrawn at the center, with a dash of The Mandalorian and Grogu (the next Star Wars live-action film) thrown in for good measure. As enjoyable as these characters were in the past, the past is not necessarily where Star Wars should be looking for fresh, exciting ideas.

Another problem with Ahsoka was the fact that it was effectively a new season of Rebels, and a huge portion of the Star Wars fanbase simply does not care about any of the animated series. Will a latent interest materialize suddenly when these characters pop up in a Filoni-verse live-action Star Wars film?

Lucasfilm needs a new vision and a coherent one if it hopes to ever recapture the magic of the original trilogy, let alone win over new Star Wars fans. Younger generations have grown up with no new Star Wars films at all; the last live-action release was 2019’s Rise of Skywalker, with Solo out the year before that. The last time a Star Wars film released with relatively little controversy was 2016’s Rogue One.

Of the many live-action projects, only the first season of The Mandalorian and Andor managed to stick the landing. In many ways, the former is the antithesis of Filoni’s Star Wars: grim, cerebral and politically charged with very little time for childish humor or colorful palettes.

Fond Farewells and Introductions at Disney

What direction Star Wars will go under Filoni and Brennan remains to be seen, of course, but without a shift in focus back toward what gives this franchise such broad and enduring appeal, it seems unlikely that a great deal will change at Lucasfilm. If nothing else, hopefully new leadership learned from the mistakes of the past decade-and-a-half. While both credit and blame ultimately land at the feet of the president, the reality behind Disney’s fumbling of Star Wars is far more complicated than any one person’s influence. Righting the starship will be no easy task.

“My love of storytelling was shaped by the films of Kathleen Kennedy and George Lucas. I never dreamed I would be privileged to learn the craft of filmmaking from both of them,” Filoni, who has been with Lucasfilm since 2005, said in a statement. “From Rey to Grogu, Kathy has overseen the greatest expansion in Star Wars storytelling onscreen that we have ever seen. 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.”

“Lucasfilm has played such a meaningful part in my life,” Brennan, who began at Industrial Light & Magic in 1999 before becoming General Manager of Lucasfilm in 2015, added. “It’s a community of inspiring storytellers with a rebel spirit like no other, and I am honored to join Dave Filoni in leading us forward. I have been so fortunate to learn from George Lucas, Kathy Kennedy and Alan Bergman and have unwavering faith in Dave’s creative vision for the next chapter in this storied studio’s legacy.”

“When we acquired Lucasfilm more than a decade ago, we knew we were bringing into the Disney family not only one of the most beloved and enduring storytelling universes ever created, but also a team of extraordinary talent led by a visionary filmmaker — someone who had been handpicked by George Lucas himself, no less,” said Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company. “We’re deeply grateful for Kathleen Kennedy’s leadership, her vision, and her stewardship of such an iconic studio and brand.”

Kennedy is currently working as a producer on upcoming live-action Star Wars films, The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026) and Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter (2027). Kennedy co-founded Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg, helping produce classics like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future and Schindler’s List.