Kathleen Kennedy admits handing over Star Wars is a relief
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to run Star Wars, Kathleen Kennedy says stepping away from Lucasfilm is a relief — and her reasoning speaks volumes.
If you've followed Star Wars at all in the last decade or so, you'll know Kathleen Kennedy’s name is basically etched on every major decision, triumph, and squabble that’s come out of Lucasfilm since 2012. Now she’s stepped aside—after more than a few storms—and finally decided to shed some light on what it’s actually like to captain the Star Wars ship once George Lucas had left the bridge. She did so at a recent Bloomberg event, sounding equal parts philosophical and just plain knackered.
These jobs are not easy, and stepping into something like that that George had created was an incredible challenge.
The conversation wandered into what it took to run a studio living on nostalgia with fans proud to be the loudest armchair producers in history—especially when even minor decisions seem to turn half the internet inside out. Kennedy admitted that, yes, there’s a type of 'relief' in passing the baton beyond the galactic coastline of her Lucasfilm era.
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50 Years of Space Baggage
With Star Wars clocking up half a century, Kennedy didn’t sugarcoat the sheer balancing act required. She described the main headache as walking the tightrope between giving diehards what they loved and dragging the franchise into something fresher—a dilemma every big legacy brand wrestles with, but doubly so when there’s very little in fandom more precious than one's Star Wars hot takes.
Well, I think that that's the challenge that all franchises [face], certainly something that's been around now for 50 years. You've got people where this means a lot to them. But at the same time, the challenge is to try to create something new, something original. So finding that balance is really the toughest thing.
If you look back over Kennedy’s time at Lucasfilm, it’s been a proper mixed bag. She was already an industry titan when Lucas brought her on—Jurassic Park pedigree and all—but the Star Wars job was something else entirely. She oversaw every major Star Wars release post-Disney acquisition, from the massive relaunch with The Force Awakens (still her box office high watermark), through the increasingly conflicted sequels. Each new film seemed to spark more arguments, and the takings at the ticket office didn’t exactly trend upwards.
- The Force Awakens – hyper-profitable, but leaned very heavily on familiar ground
- The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker – divided both fandom and critics; the backlash was so noisy it nearly drowned out the projector
- Solo: A Star Wars Story – famously troubled behind the scenes, unsteady reception, box office stumbled
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – critical darling by comparison, led to the much-admired Andor TV series
- The Mandalorian, Andor, The Acolyte – streaming series that showed Lucasfilm was willing to experiment on Disney+, even if some played safer than others
All told, she weathered the lot. One foot in the old saga, the other in the chase for something that didn’t just feel like fan-service. And fans—well, they always had their say, for better or usually a lot worse.
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Even with a new face running Lucasfilm, Kennedy’s not off to a desert island just yet. She’s producing the upcoming standalone film Star Wars: Starfighter, set for 28 May 2027. There’s no true escape from the galaxy far, far away—just a new vantage point.
The next Star Wars cinema release, Starfighter, is set for 28 May 2027.