Rumor: Kathleen Kennedy To Exit Lucasfilm By Year's End
A new rumor claims that Kathleen Kennedy will exit Lucasfilm by the end of the year and she’s already informed Disney as well as friends and close associates.
This latest rumor comes from Matthew Belloni at Puck who shared, “After years of speculation, and polite urging from observers like me, Kathleen Kennedy has informed Disney, as well as friends and associates, that she will exit as Lucasfilm president by the end of the year, per three sources.”
Belloni went on to reveal that Kennedy planned to exit last year and even had an exit interview planned, but chose to stay on through 2025.
Kennedy’s track record at Lucasfilm is abysmal and much of the franchise’s failures can be laid at her feet as she shared that she planned on changing the franchise from the get go.
Back in 2015, a decade ago, Kennedy laid out her plans for Star Wars during an appearance at The Most Powerful Women Summit 2015, “I think the interesting path we’ve had is the conversation that took place around consumer products. Because there were a lot of companies that were in place who frankly didn’t initially feel that Star Wars was for girls.”
She continued, “And when you have a company situation where between Lucasfilm and Disney, we were all looking at this situation saying, ‘No, with Star Wars we have to change this. We have to make sure that we create products that are in a sense appealing to both boys and girls.’ What’s wrong with that?”
“The fact that the company was bought by The Walt Disney Company has been amazing because they very much support the fact that we are trying to grow in the work force a number of women in executive positions and in all positions inside the company,” Kennedy outlined. “And with the movies that we are making and with the protagonists that we are putting in the stories. So I get a huge amount of support with that.”
She added, “But we have 50% of our executive team are women. And six out of eight of the people in my story group are women. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would be surprised that we’re making Star Wars movies and the majority of the people involved in the development of those stories are women. And I think it’s making a huge difference in the stories that we’re trying to tell.”
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Not only did Kennedy set out and infect Star Wars with feminism, but she eroded the core messages and themes of Lucas’ films that were succinctly pointed out by Archbishop Lazar Puhalo in his review. He noted, “While the general battles are fought with standard science fiction weaponry, this is only the superficial part of the story, because the actual battle is being fought in the human conscience and will. Surprisingly, delightfully, the real story is one of the immense struggle between the dark and the good side of that universal nature of which man is a part - the fallen nature of man and the universe.”
Lucas himself has noted how the leadership and creatives at Lucasfilm seemingly no longer understand his films. In May 2024 during an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival, Lucas said, “I was the one who really knew what Star Wars was … who actually knew this world, because there’s a lot to it. The Force, for example, nobody understood the Force.”
He added, “When they started other ones after I sold the company, a lot of the ideas that were in [the original] sort of got lost. But that’s the way it is. You give it up, you give it up.”
Lucas made similar comments during an appearance at The East Harlem School at Exodus House in October 2020. He was asked by 7th grader Jeremiah, “The world has changed so much since the first Star Wars movie, how do you think the changes in the fight for racial justice will impact the Star Wars universe going forward?”
He answered, “I don’t know, I mean. I kind of lost control of Star Wars, so it’s going off in a different path than what I intended.”
“But the first six [Star Wars films] are very much mine and my philosophy,” Lucas added. “And I think that philosophy sort of, goes beyond any particular time, because it’s based on history, it’s based on philosophy, it’s based on a lot of things.”
Ahead of the release of The Force Awakens, Lucas also made pointed comments about The Walt Disney Company in an interview with Charlie Rose. He said, “These are my kids. … All the Star Wars films. … I loved them. I created them. I’m very intimately involved in them. … I sold them to the white slavers that take these things and…”
Furthermore, Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted to betraying Lucas in his book The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years As CEO of The Walt Disney Company. After explaining how he purchased Lucas’ outlines for a sequel trilogy and then chose to not use them, Iger said, “Now, in the first meeting with him about the future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start.”
What do you make of this latest rumor that Kathleen Kennedy will exit Lucasfilm by the end of the year?
Good riddance. But the brand is dead and desecrated and only jettisoning everything Disney has done with Star Wars could resurrect it.