Crime Star Wars legend Kathleen Kennedy ‘expected to retire’ later this year - Producer has been instrumental in shaping the franchise for more than a decade.

UPDATE: Complete fabrication! She is just choosing a succession plan for many years down the road. But she will NEVER RETIRE FROM MAKING MOVIES BISH!

https://deadline.com/2025/02/kathleen-kennedy-clarifies-lucasfilm-exit-star-wars-future-1236304421/

L/A

Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy is set to step down from her role as overseer of the Star Wars franchise, according to new reports.

Kennedy joined the production company, which was founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas, in 2012 in the role of co-chair, alongside director Lucas.

Just a few months later, Lucas sold the company to Disney for $4bn and Kennedy was promoted to the role of president.

But film industry newsletter Puck reported on Monday (24 February) that Kennedy, 71, has told colleagues that she will retire by the end of 2025.

The Independent has contacted Lucasfilm for further comment.

The producer, who previously worked with Steven Spielberg on films including ET, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, oversaw the relaunch of the Star Wars franchise, kicking off with the release of seventh movie The Force Awakens in 2015.

The Force Awakens, directed by JJ Abrams was a huge box office success, grossing more than $2bn around the world, and also received a generally positive response from the film series’ legions of fans.

Disney went on to rapidly expand the franchise, releasing one film a year until 2019, including spin-off movies such as 2016’s Rogue One and 2018’s Solo, as well as Star Wars TV shows including The Mandalorian.

However, Kennedy’s tenure at Lucasfilm was not entirely straightforward. Both Rogue One and Solo had complex journeys to the big screen, with the former reportedly requiring extensive reshoots.

Kennedy also fired Solo’s original directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord while the Han Solo origin story movie was in production, eventually replacing him with Ron Howard.

As the franchise quickly grew, with the arrival of a slew of streaming spin-offs, some Star Wars fans seemed concerned that this speedy expansion was diluting the magic of the galaxy far, far away.

Various other projects, including a film trilogy from Game of Thrones screenwriters David Benioff and DB Weiss and another from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, failed to materialise.

The next Star Wars movie will be The Mandalorian and Grogu, which will debut in May 2026, marking the franchise’s first big screen release since The Rise of Skywalker, the concluding part of the reboot trilogy, arrived in December 2019

 

[Fapcop]

Tfa had ideas there, though. It would have been pretty cool to see Fin becoming the Jedi with Rey being the Han Solo figure.

What ideas? Genuinely curious as to what you mean.

Taking the perspective of a stormtrooper? The guys who get gunned down constantly?

(Nevermind that Finn is fundamentally broken. Like five minutes after we see his little moment with the bloody handprint, he’s whooping and hollering as he’s… GUNNING DOWN HIS COMRADES?! The other people who were taken as children? With the pilot guy, someone he’s known for like 5 minutes?! Wtf?!?)

He was a totally pointless character. Someone had the “bright” idea of making one of the stormtroopers be a protagonist, and they spent the rest of the trilogy trying to find something for him to do. And failed.

 

[Male Idiot]

Furloni you mean, given he's got a bigger hardon for wolves than whoever writes the Space Wolf codices these days.

Man, I had completely forgotten that cunt's name until you mentioned the Holdo Maneuver.

Does he get a bigger hardon for wolves or for Ashoka?

 

[TenMilesWide]

Tfa had ideas there, though. It would have been pretty cool to see Fin becoming the Jedi with Rey being the Han Solo figure.

TFA was a pile of JJ Abrams' trademark nothing-inside mystery boxes, carefully arranged to trick you into thinking the ideas you came up with yourself while watching it, actually came from it.

 

[Dixieland Buckaroo]

On Nerdrotic Nooner today, Gary says that the he knew some folks at Amblin, and they laughed when they heard Kathleen was being promoted to head LFL.

 

[Snekposter]

the first two seasons of the Mandalorian

Which she absolutely hated because the only stronk female in it was... Gina Carano, former MMA fighter and actual stronk woman who could probably break KK over her knee without any effort.

I don’t think I ever seen them used outside of videos shitting on the sequels.

I've seen the line about Palpatine used elsewhere as a general method of lampooning terrible writing that offers no explanation.

Does he get a bigger hardon for wolves or for Ashoka?

Ooooh, tough call.

 

[The best and greatest]

I think it's to console him for the metric fuckton of money he received to offload all the Star Wars shit onto someone else and give no fucks about it evermore. That was obviously super traumatic

It will never cease to amuse me that George got to have the last laugh over all the fans who tore him to shit. He laughed all the way to the bank


Flawless Victory George, I tip my lightsaber to you sir

 

[AnotherPleb]

TFA was a pile of JJ Abrams' trademark nothing-inside mystery boxes, carefully arranged to trick you into thinking the ideas you came up with yourself while watching it, actually came from it.

I never said it was good overall, The Sequel trilogy set the bar so low that it made everyone pine for the Prequel Trilogy.

What ideas? Genuinely curious as to what you mean.

Taking the perspective of a stormtrooper? The guys who get gunned down constantly?

(Nevermind that Finn is fundamentally broken. Like five minutes after we see his little moment with the bloody handprint, he’s whooping and hollering as he’s… GUNNING DOWN HIS COMRADES?! The other people who were taken as children? With the pilot guy, someone he’s known for like 5 minutes?! Wtf?!?)

He was a totally pointless character. Someone had the “bright” idea of making one of the stormtroopers be a protagonist, and they spent the rest of the trilogy trying to find something for him to do. And failed.

A better writer could have taken the idea of a stormtrooper waking up to the shit he was doing and slowly becoming force sensitive, then slowly becoming a jedi fighting against his former bosses to make a good story. Hell, even toss in some actual conflict with fighting his former comrades there (which you note falls on its ass because they dropped that perspective) and give some of them names to give it a personal element! I'm not the best creative writer, but I could still see the crumbs and pieces of what could have been with Finn in TFA and get mad how badly they dropped the ball on him throughout the trilogy. One of the only half decent moments in TLJ where he nearly sacrificed himself got ruined too thanks to that fat chick ramming him.

It'd also make it impossible to claim that the only way someone could be a powerful force user is by bloodline unless you tried saying shit like Finn was Mace Windu's son. But nope, gotta have KK's self-insert there to humiliate Han and Luke.

 

[Fapcop]

A better writer could have taken the idea of a stormtrooper waking up to the shit he was doing and slowly becoming force sensitive, then slowly becoming a jedi fighting against his former bosses to make a good story.

This is getting highly autistic, but fuck it.

I disagree first of all because it doesn’t really jive with the Star Wars as basically a family drama premise. (Might work as a novel or whatever.)

But secondly and most importantly: The whole new canon of where Stormtroopers come from doesn’t make a lick of sense.

The stormtroopers were originally clones, then later volunteers joined in as well. Why not just stick to clones and volunteers? Or just clones?

Because they needed to make the first order super mean super villains, that’s why. It’s retarded.

“Should we cook up a batch of clone troopers Admiral?”

“Nah, let’s kidnap children muahahaha!”

One of the only half decent moments in TLJ where he nearly sacrificed himself got ruined too thanks to that fat chick ramming him.

Wholeheartedly agree. The best thing they could have done with Finn is just have him die there. They basically spent most of 8 and especially 9 trying to figure out wtf to do with him.

I’m still pretty sure that the only reason he was in TFA at all was because there was 3 main protagonists in ANH, and they took the soft reboot/copy ANH but make a few changes thing too seriously and never stopped to think more than two minutes.

At some point I’d like an article or a book that explains WHY they failed so miserably. Like what was the thinking? Besides: “SW is basically a money making machine! We just need to copy it and put in some new actors and it’ll make BANK!”

But hey… At least we got this out all the blueballing and billions of dollars:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b2zZFtq13c4

 

[AnotherPleb]

At some point I’d like an article or a book that explains WHY they failed so miserably.

For starters? Disney didn't want to pay any royalties to EU sources after paying $4 billion for Star Wars so they burned 40+ years of basically focus tested materials to the ground. Was some of it dogshit? Absolutely. It was also something that any franchise would kill to have. When they killed that they killed the interest of the turboautists that helped the franchise thrive.

There was also absolute malice on Kathleen Kennedy's part. Any idiot could tell you that Star Wars is as much a guy's franchise as My Little Pony is for girls; you may have people of the opposite gender interested in it but for the most part it's pretty divided. Having the person in charge of Star Wars come out with her famous The Force Is Female shirt is like the president of Hasbro coming on stage with a cadre of bronies all wearing shirts with Fallout Equestria logos. It's no coincidence that the only member of the OT that was slated to live was Leia.

Either of those would be a major issue. Both of them, at the same time? It was catastrophic. You had a fanbase that saw 40+ years of works they loved get gutted with a leadership that made it clear that their fans weren't wanted. Is it any wonder that Star Wars is a shadow of its former self now?

 

[Dixieland Buckaroo]

Disney didn't want to pay any royalties to EU sources after paying $4 billion for Star Wars so they burned 40+ years of basically focus tested materials to the ground.

Almost all the EU work was work for hire. LFL owns Thrawn, Revan, Kyle Katarn, etc. The exception might be the early novels like Splinter of the Mind's Eye... but I would think if the lore is right that it began as a cheap sequel story, even it was probably bought whole.

The Disney LFL team threw out the EU because they didn't want to be slaves to continuity, because that would take work. Even Feloni didn't give a shit about continuity, and that predates the sale. Dave was a key wingman of Kathy's.

Oh, and also so the lazy hack writers could steal ideas from the EU and claim them as their own later. Harder to do Thrawn again in Ahsoka if Thrawn still exists in Heir to the Empire etc.

 

[William Murderface]

KK was really good as a producer. Her job was to do the behind the scenes stuff like make sure the bills were paid, people were hired, locations scouted, infrastructure was in place, and so on. Her job was to do the business stuff so the creative people (e.g. director, writer, and actors) could focus on doing the creative stuff and she did that kind of work marvelously for decades. But she sucked once she was given the keys to the kingdom and had to do the creative stuff. And Disney should have had her explain exactly why they were going to spend 4 billion on a boys brand to make the boy version of a Disney Princess just to turn it into a gurrrllll power project instead of letting her have carte blanche and they should have wanted firm details of the story structure of the ST and side projects instead of just telling her to go with it. She's got plenty of blame on her shoulders but the end of the day it comes down to the Disney C-Suite not exercising enough oversight to keep her reined in, especially once TFA alienated so many once fans of the trilogy and her response was "that Star Wars is the past and we're only interested in the future" and "the Force is female" and then acted shocked that all those dads who grew up watching Star Wars didn't bother to take their sons to go see it.

She failed upward to the point that she did irrevocable damage to the brand and no one in the Big Castle said anything about it, either because of fear or political agendas or personal reasons or something else.

 

[Fapcop]

Almost all the EU work was work for hire. LFL owns Thrawn, Revan, Kyle Katarn, etc. The exception might be the early novels like Splinter of the Mind's Eye... but I would think if the lore is right that it began as a cheap sequel story, even it was probably bought whole.

True.

I think the reason they ditched it, is arrogance and hubris.

THEY know better than all those stupid nerds, and they’ll make Star Wars THEIRS.

How hard can it be after all? Just do the old trilogy over again, the nerds will buy everything as long as there is a lightsaber in it, and that new, MODERN audience will come along too!

There was also absolute malice on Kathleen Kennedy's part. Any idiot could tell you that Star Wars is as much a guy's franchise as My Little Pony is for girls

They’re morons who spent too much time huffing farts in Hollywood and reading NYT and The Atlantic.

And they’re also true believers who think that you can make SW appeal to girls because girl power. And hey! Throw in a black dude! All the urban demos will ditch the basketballs and start buying Disney merch instead! Didn’t you see that article about how representation matters in The Atlantic?

 

[E. Knee as Weapon - Cont.]

It was the Last Jedi where Kylo said "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to." Not TFA.

You're right. I just rewatched them all and now it's getting jumbled together. Maybe what I liked was that Rey was a nobody and Kylo was a Vaderboo and the First Order were an Empire tribute band, and the setup was something like "the real villain was nostalgia all along."

Whatever the case, I left TFA cautiously optimistic that they were going in an interesting direction, and then we ended up with Secret Palpatine, Skywalker dynastics, and a confusing use of side characters.

 

[Loris Yeltsin]

If there's a 90's movie by Amblin or Universal that you think is really good except for that one jarringly cringe scene you wish wasn't there, it was probably put there by Kathleen Kennedy.

Long before Star Wars, she already had a decades-spanning career as a haunting presence with just enough executive power to make other people's creative efforts shittier.

 

[Mr. 0]

If there's a 90's movie by Amblin or Universal that you think is really good except for that one jarringly cringe scene you wish wasn't there, it was probably put there by Kathleen Kennedy.

Long before Star Wars, she already had a decades-spanning career as a haunting presence with just enough executive power to make other people's creative efforts shittier.

i heard ku klux kennedy set up m night shyamalan to take the fall for the last airbender movie

 

[Yamaha YM2612]

A four billion dollar franchise ran into the ground. How does one mess up that badly?

That's what happens when women are in charge of art or finance or executive responsibility

 

[Blewberry Nausea]

Looks like it was all fake news, she’s riding this shit all the way to the center of the earth!

https://deadline.com/2025/02/kathleen-kennedy-clarifies-lucasfilm-exit-star-wars-future-1236304421/

DEADLINE: We’ve read all these speculative reports that you are out, that there’s a frenzy for the next person who’s going to take over Lucasfilm. What is the truth?

KATHLEEN KENNEDY: The truth is, and I want to just say loud and clear, I am not retiring. I will never retire from movies. I will die making movies. That is the first thing that’s important to say. I am not retiring. What’s happening at Lucasfilm is I have been talking for quite some time with both Bob and Alan about what eventual succession might look like. We have an amazing bench of people here, and we have every intention of making an announcement months or a year down the road. We are in lockstep as to what that’s going to be, and I am continuing. I’m producing the Mandalorian movie right now, and I’m also producing Shawn Levy’s movie, which is after that. So I’m continuing to stay at Lucasfilm and looking very thoughtfully with Bob and Alan as to who’s stepping in. So that is all underway, and we have every right to make that announcement when we want to make it.

 

[Prester John]

You're right. I just rewatched them all and now it's getting jumbled together. Maybe what I liked was that Rey was a nobody and Kylo was a Vaderboo and the First Order were an Empire tribute band, and the setup was something like "the real villain was nostalgia all along."

Whatever the case, I left TFA cautiously optimistic that they were going in an interesting direction, and then we ended up with Secret Palpatine, Skywalker dynastics, and a confusing use of side characters.

Rian Johnson decided there was a dead cat in each of JJ's mystery boxes.

 

[Snekposter]

I’m producing the Mandalorian movie right now

I can't fucking wait to hear about what a gigantic pile of burned money and human feces it turned out to be.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

There's nothing left to destroy. She ran the biggest franchise in the history of mankind into the ground. At this point retirement is just a victory lap.