Kathleen Kennedy stepping down as Lucasfilm president

Kennedy’s departure comes as the first new Star Wars movies in six years head toward release. The Mandalorian and Grogu , directed by Jon Favreau and co-written by Favreau and Filoni, will premiere in May of this year. Meanwhile, Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter will drop May of next year. Kennedy will remain on as producer of both movies before leaving to return to independent producing.

The Disney tenure which has encompassed Kennedy’s entire time as Lucasfilm president has seen massive highs and lows. The sequel trilogy, beginning with 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, made loads of money but has also met backlash from fans for its lack of planning resulting in a muddled narrative and overreliance on past iconography. Similarly, the two interim Star Wars Story films, Rogue One and Solo, saw behind-the-scenes turmoil and diminished box office. All of the films have their fans. The lone non-Star Wars film Lucasfilm produced under Kennedy was Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny which severely underperformed for its gargantuan budget.

At the same time, the television streaming offerings from Lucasfilm provided much of the backbone for the nascent Disney+ service. Those, too, were often hit and miss and the fan discourse over several were exhausting. Still, The Mandalorian was pretty universally beloved and Andor proved a different, more adult take on the material could be incredible.

I have a hard time saying the Kennedy regime at Lucasfilm is the “failure” that many loud people on the internet would have you believe. I simply think she’s not the kind of producer who takes narrative control, allowing the writers, directors, and other artists to shape the stories and provide oversight where needed. She’s not a Kevin Feige, a James Gunn, or indeed a Dave Filoni, who has shaped much of the Star Wars landscape since beginning on The Clone Wars animated series nearly 20 years ago.

I definitely won’t sit here and claim every movie and TV show in the past 14 years has been great, or even always good, but the messiness gave us some interesting projects. If I had to suffer through The Book of Boba Fett to get Andor, I’ll obviously take it. We’ll probably get more coherence under Filoni and Brennan, but far fewer wild swings.

Let us not forget, Kathleen Kennedy has been nominated for eight Oscars as a producer. If she wants to return to independent producing, I hope that means a return to form.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.