‘Star Wars’ Head Kathleen Kennedy Reportedly Stepping Down. Could We Finally Get Fix For Star Wars Land’s Big Problem?

Kathleen Kennedy has run Lucasfilm for 13 years, including the entire time that Disney has owned the company. In that role, she oversees everything Star Wars and Indiana Jones at Disney specifically producing film and television.

Now, there are reports from a Hollywood insider that Kennedy will step down from Lucasfilm later this year. Our thoughts immediately go to how this could impact Disney's theme parks and the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge lands on both coasts.

Here are the details from the reported change and the likely impacts this could have on Disney generally.

Kathleen Kennedy Leaving Lucasfilm Disney

A report from Puck indicates that Kennedy will retire at the end of the year. She turns 72 in June. The report cites three sources and sates that she has already informed Disney as well as friends and associates.

The report also includes that Kennedy had considered leaving Disney last year and even went so far as to schedule an exit interview with a journalist but opted for one more year at the company.

Kennedy has a long history as a producer in Hollywood working on films ranging from E.T. to Indiana Jones. She was George Lucas' handpicked successor to run the company from before it was purchased by Disney.

She's received criticism over the years for the lack of clear creative direction for the Star Wars franchise. Many different new film ideas have been stopped and started over the years and the final three Skywalker Saga movies lacked a story arc. This stood in direct contrast to the Marvel Cinematic Universe where Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige took a direct hand in shaping the ongoing storyline for the movies. This is what allowed for the massive Avengers: Endgame culmination. This point is important for our next discussion about the impact at the parks.

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Matt Belloni of Puck summarizes her time at the company…

“She gets credit for reinventing Star Wars for streaming with The Mandalorian, but the hit rate on Disney+ series has been low, especially considering the cost of those shows. And she effectively tossed the Star Wars film franchise into a Death Star trash compactor with three high-grossing yet increasingly desperate and disjointed Skywalker movies, plus two spinoffs, and a parade of high-profile development that led to scrapped projects and disgruntled creatives. Ask a top creator about their experience working with Lucasfilm and you’ll likely get an earful: unclear direction, paralyzed decision-making, extreme aversion to creative risks yet also slavish devotion to a fan base that has become increasingly toxic. Not great.”

Belloni finished his report on Puck writing that it was unclear who would be the next Lucasfilm President. Belloni posits it could be Dave Filoni, the longtime Lucasfilm creative and Clone Wars Creator who has a hand in some of the streaming shows, and thinks that Jon Favreau, the prolific creative who has worked across Disney, would turn down an executive role. This shift will also come as a bigger executive shakeup is happening with the next Disney CEO expected to be announced sometime around the beginning of 2026. As I mentioned in our look at the big Disney Parks executive shakeup, no executive shift happens in a vacuum. Perhaps there will be larger creative changes in who owns what at Lucasfilm.

Lucasfilm would benefit from a successor with a reverence for the original stories that is also willing to find new grand stories to tell within the universe.

Kennedy Departure Impact on Theme Parks at Disney

The bigger, more interesting, musing that we can begin is how Kennedy leaving Lucasfilm will impact the Disney theme parks and the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge experiences on both coasts.

Right now, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge and Avengers Campus are a tale of how two different executives interact with the theme parks. At Avengers Campus, there are constant changes to the land that bring the latest Marvel characters from a new movie or series and new inspired menus. Kevin Feige, the President of Marvel Studios, is a huge Disney Parks fan. He has spoken about how he was going to the D23 Expo as a fan before Disney bought Marvel and how he listened to the WDW Radio podcast on his drives to the studio. His love of the theme parks shows through in that he is engaged and excited about new Marvel additions and gives budget and his focus for the land to succeed.

On the Star Wars side of the house, Kennedy has never appeared to feel this way to us. I can't think of a time I've heard about her walking in the theme parks or engaging with Disney Parks leadership on projects beyond the opening of the land (it could have happened but haven't heard much about it). In fact, it seemed like she was almost indifferent to the theme parks and didn't have a strong feeling either way about some of the topics we discuss. We criticize the land for not breaking the set out timeline of stories that do not include the most classic characters. My perception is that's actually an Imagineering and Lucasfilm creative decision rather than one that Kennedy spends time thinking about.

That's kind of the point though. What if there was a Star Wars leader who was really engaged in how the theme park presence of the characters manifested? That person would probably look at the current offering and recognize that the land would benefit from legacy characters and breaking the timeline rules that prevent changes. They might be open to hearing criticisms that we have expressed like our look at the major problem with Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.

Some of this appears to finally be getting resolved. We learned that for the first time Luke Skywalker will appear inside the land during the upcoming Star Wars: Season of the Force at Disneyland. In 2026, both the version the Millennium Falcon ride at Disneyland and Disney World are getting a big refresh with a new storyline based on the Mandalorian movie coming to theaters that year. We really hope that is the beginning of a major refresh for the entire land that breaks the timeline that has been holding them to only include characters from the newest movies. It could also be the beginning of new Star Wars movies getting a major promotional treatment which in turn then leads to marketing dollars that could be allowed to be spent in the parks.

I cover these changes so closely because so many people, myself included, are so passionate about Star Wars and see that the current Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge offerings (excluding Rise of the Resistance) don't completely live up to the wish fulfillment expected of a Star Wars experience.

We'll continue to watch closely, but I sure hope that we get a new leader at Lucasfilm who has the same passion for the theme parks as Kevin Feige does. Perhaps Feige could even come in and take creative control of the Star Wars franchises as well. We know that Favreau is a big Disney Parks fan and perhaps Filoni is as well. From the outside it's difficult to see what some of these changes could mean for the theme parks, but we'll start to see this shift as the new projects come online in 2026.

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