‘Star Wars’ head Kathleen Kennedy is set to exit Lucasfilm this year

Kennedy steered the Star Wars franchise through a tumultuous decade.

By Joe Allen Published February 25, 2025

Kathleen Kennedy at Comic-Con in 2015. — Wikimedia Commons

After more than a decade at the head of Lucasfilm, reporting suggests that Kathleen Kennedy will retire by the end of 2025. According to reporting in Puck, Kennedy is planning to step aside at the end of her current contract.

Kennedy first joined Lucasfilm in 2012 when the company was purchased by Disney. Since then, she has shepherded five movies and even more TV shows inside of the Star Wars universe and caught the ire of many Star Wars fans along the way.

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was Kennedy’s first venture in this universe, remains the highest-grossing film in the history of the domestic box office, and revived the very notion of Star Wars as a theatrical experience. In the years since that movie’s release in 2015, though, Kennedy’s decision-making has come under question both because of the diminishing returns of Star Wars‘s theatrical releases and because of the scattershot approach the franchise has taken to its television properties.

It’s unclear whether Kennedy may continue to produce independently after she steps down, but if she’s fully retiring it will mark the end of one of the longest and most successful producing careers in the history of Hollywood. In addition to her work on Star Wars, she also produced E.T. and Jurassic Park, and has been nominated for Best Picture eight separate times as a producer.

Still, it’s been six years since there was a Star Wars movie in theaters, and some will be excited to see someone new take over following Kennedy’s departure. Whether the future of Star Wars is brighter than the past remains to be seen, though.

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Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…

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