OK, as you’ve heard, it’s official. After months of teasing her successor, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy officially stepped down yesterday, handing over the reins to “The Mandalorian” co-creator Dave Filoni (as president/chief creative officer) pairing with Lynwen Brennan (as co-president overseeing operations), a creative/business split not unlike James Gunn/Peter Safran at DC Studios and Pete Docter/ Jim Morris division at Pixar.
With Kennedy stepping aside as Lucasfilm’s top boss, there are still many questions about the franchise’s long-rumored next era. And in an exit interview with Deadline, Kennedy offered a rare temperature check on several “maybe someday” theatrical projects—some cooling, some still stubbornly warm.
Most notably, the ancient-Jedi origin film from James Mangold and Beau Willimon (“Andor”)—the project Lucasfilm announced in 2023 under the “Dawn of the Jedi” banner—isn’t dead, but it’s definitely parked. “Jim Mangold and Beau Willimon wrote an incredible script, but it is definitely breaking the mold, and it’s on hold,” she admitted. Later in the interview, she characterized it as living on the “back burner.”
This is really no surprise, following his heralded Bob Dylan film with Timothée Chalamet, Mangold quickly made a deal with Paramount for another reteam with the young actor for an upcoming motocross heist film called “High Side.”
Also listed on “the backburner” is Steven Soderbergh’s “The Hunt For Ben Solo,” a film meant to star Adam Driver, written by Scott Z. Burns, but by all accounts, including Soderbergh’s, that project is deader than Dillinger (Kennedy calling it “backburned” will surely give fans some hope, though).
Meanwhile, two other long-developing efforts sounded like they’d at least reached a tangible milestone: pages delivered. Kennedy said Taika Waititi had turned in a script she described as “hilarious and great,” while Donald Glover had also turned in a script, tied to the long-discussed “Lando” feature idea. But Kennedy also made the subtext explicit: deciding what happens next wouldn’t just be her call anymore. The fate of those scripts, she suggested, would be something Filoni and Brennan would have to sort out.
“I think the ones by Taika and Donald are still somewhat alive. That’s going to really be up to the new team to figure out,” she said.
If you’re looking for the one project that sounded like it still has forward momentum (even if it’s been through the narrative blender), it was the would-be new trilogy from Simon Kinberg (a “Star Wars: Rebels” co-creator, the director of “X-Men: Dark Phoenix”). Kennedy said Kinberg delivered material that was well received, workshopped, and studio-noted, and that looks promising to the new powers that be.
“He’s working right now. He wrote something that we read in August, and it was very good, but not there,” she explained. “We’ve pretty much upended the story, and then spent a great deal of time on the treatment, which he finished literally about four weeks ago. And it’s a very detailed treatment, like 70 pages. And so he is expected to give us something in March.”
“I know that Dave and Lynwen are very much on board with what Simon’s doing,” she added. “And that would be a new trilogy.”
Elsewhere, at the Hollywood Reporter, the outlet noted that Dave Filoni’s movie, which combined characters from the “Star Wars” TV universe, including Pedro Pascal’s The Mandalorian, was also put on the back burner.
For those keeping score, all three films announced at Star Wars Celebration Europe in April 2023—Filoni’s movie, Mangold’s movie and filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s “The New Jedi Order” with Daisy Ridley’s Rey Skywalker—have all been paused and or, in the case of Rey’s picture, still trying to finish a script worth shooting, and been delayed multiple times.
As of right now, only two “Star Wars” films are officially dated: Jon Favreau’s “The Mandalorian & Grogu” arriving later this summer (May 22, 2026) and “Deadpool and Wolverine” filmmaker Shawn Levy’s “Star Wars: Starfighter,” starring Ryan Gosling, which comes next year on May 28, 2027.
As for Kennedy’s new role at the company? Producing certain Lucasfilm movies and helping out where needed. “I am open to producing any of what it is they need. Certainly, in the things that I’ve been involved in and the filmmakers that I’ve been working with, I’d love to see those through if I could. But I’m not mandating any of that. I’m genuinely trying to support the new team that’s coming in and encouraging them to make the decisions. They need to. You’ve got to be on board to drive these things, and so I’m really encouraging them to do that.”
