When George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, longtime Hollywood producer Kathleen Kennedy took over running the studio. From there, she guided the franchise set in a galaxy far, far away into new territory under the Mouse House’s umbrella, delivering both new movies and expanding Star Wars’ TV reach with both animated and live-action programming, among other media projects. Now it’s been officially announced that Kennedy is stepping down from Lucasfilm after 14 years, and her position will be filled by two people, one of whom is quite familiar to hardcore Star Wars fans.
Coming straight from Disney and Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni, who’s been a key figure in the Star Wars franchise stretching back to The Clone Wars, has been tapped to serve as Lucasfilm’s President and Chief Creative Officer, while Lynwen Brennan will serve as Co-President. As the official announcement states, Filoni’s duties will see him “take on creative leadership of the company,” leaving Brennan to handle the more business-y aspects. And while she’s no longer running Lucasfilm. Meanwhile, Kennedy will move back to being a full-time producer, which includes being involved on the upcoming Star Wars movies The Mandalorian & Grogu and Starfighter.
There have been rumors about Kathleen Kennedy’s retirement for years, but now it’s a done deal. Dave Filoni’s promotion should come as no surprise to anyone who’s familiar with his work. He’s played been an integral role in shaping the Star Wars mythology for two decades, particularly on the TV side of things. This ranges from creating Ahsoka Tano for The Clones Wars to writing, directing and executive producing The Mandalorian, Ahsoka and The Book of Boba Fett. He’s also cameoed in several episodes of The Mandalorian as New Republic pilot Trapper Wolf.
Lynwen Brennan has also been part of Lucasfilm for a long time, as she started working for Industrial Light & Magic in 1999, the year The Phantom Menace came out. 10 years later, she was tapped to run ILM, and from there, she became the General Manager of Lucasfilm in 2015, then its President & General Manager in 2024. In Variety’s writeup of today’s news, the articles muses that having Filoni and Brennan run Lucasfilm together “suggests that Disney felt the need to pair a strong filmmaking force with someone with a firm sense of budgets and balance sheets.”
This move echoes how James Gunn and Peter Safran were hired to lead DC Studios together a few years ago for similar reasoning. As stated in the headline, this is a major shakeup for Lucasfilm, and it’ll be interesting to see how Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan guide the Star Wars franchise and if it any way starts heavily deviating from what was being done during Kathleen Kennedy’s tenure. For now, we can look forward to The Mandalorian & Grogu arriving to the 2026 movies schedule on May 22, and Ahsoka Season 2 will also premiere sometime this year.
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