‘When George Lucas asked me to take over Lucasfilm in his retirement, I could never have imagined what lay ahead,’ Kathleen Kennedy has just announced, marking the end of an era in Hollywood’s most complex ever succession story.
After over 13 years at the helm of Lucasfilm for Disney, Kennedy is handing over the reins as president. The kingdom has been split between two trusted veterans, with Dave Filoni as president and Chief Creative Officer, and Lynwen Brennan, President of Lucasfilm and General Manager of Business, as co-President. They will report to Alan Bergman, Disney Entertainment co-chairman. This is not unexpected, as it seems that this is a tradition that extends across Disney, splitting the leadership of each of their corporations into two paths, something that Lucasfilm is only formalizing after all these years of juggling movie ambitions, volume, and fan bases that seem to regard their canon with a certain holiness.
Kennedy’s legacy is one that is hard to argue against. The Lucasfilm titles under her leadership have cumulatively crossed $5.6 billion at the global box office, led by “The Force Awakens” in 2015, which crossed $2 billion at the global box office. The list extended to the Disney+ originals space, where “Mandalorian” and “Andor” have solidified “Star Wars” as a brand in the world of streaming entertainment, rather than being relegated to holiday weekend fare. However, the theatrical heartbeat of this franchise often stopped after “The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019, as several projects announced in this franchise failed to see the light of day, making this franchise’s identity in the world of movie entertainment anything but clear, while the television calendar remained busy.
This paradox, momentum versus misfire, became the narrative hidden within the narrative. The most successful “Star Wars” productions of this decade have been those that received a course correction. “Rogue One” was a film that survived a notorious post-production phase in which it received a last-minute boost from Tony Gilroy; the filmmaker has talked about the film’s fix in an appearance on a podcast in terms of “emotional clarity: So it’s a movie about sacrifice.” On the other hand, “Rogue One” filmmaker Gareth Edwards has argued against the Internet mythology that the film was simply ripped from his hands in mid-production; the filmmaker has said in a radio interview that “there’s so much inaccuracy in what has been reported as having occurred and that I did shoot my corridor fight with Darth Vader during pickups for that film.” Such conflicts between public history and actual history seem to plague Lucasfilm in this decade, particularly in terms of the changes in directors that seem to occur mid-production for “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
Even those that never made it to the screen became part of this franchise’s afterlife. Steven Soderbergh, when discussing his abandoned “Ben Solo” project, stated, “I did not like deceiving people about the existence of THE HUNT FOR BEN SOLO,” with Kennedy telling him that the rejection of his finished script was “a first” as it pertained to Disney’s rejection. This is also indicative of this ‘Star Wars’ paradox within the current time frame, as the relationship the fans had with the franchise is no longer just with the released material but with the teased material, the rumored material, the denied material, as well as the material that is lamented for its loss.
Filoni is the obvious choice based upon his work from his animation series (“The Clone Wars”) through his work within the live-action format for the Disney+ series as the executive producer for shows such as “Ahsoka.” Brennan has the institutional knowledge from his work as the head of business affairs for Lucasfilm as well as his time as the CEO for Industrial Light & Magic. Kennedy, on the other hand, is leaving but not closing the door as she will be one of the producers for the upcoming films, including “The Mandalorian & Grogu” as well as 2027’s “Star Wars: Starfighter.”
