In the latest round of ‘The rumors of her retirement have been greatly exaggerated’, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy says that while she has in fact commenced the search for her eventual successor, there is absolutely no truth to the recent rumor that she will be stepping down from her position at the end of 2025.
this latest declaration of ‘She’s definitely leaving this time, everyone!’ came courtesy of The Puck‘s founder and proprietor, former The Hollywood Reporter editorial director Matthew Belloni.
“Kathleen Kennedy has informed Disney, as well as friends and associates, that she will exit as Lucasfilm president by the end of the year, per three sources,” wrote Belloni on February 24th. “Kathy was actually planning to leave last year, I’m told, and had event set up an exit interview with a journalist, but she decided to stay for one more year.”
And though Belloni’s work history resulted in his report being given more credibility the previous claims to the fact made by various scoopers and YouTubers over the past few years – so much so that major outlets like Variety and the aforementioned THR published reports on the news – like clockwork, it was eventually proven to be verifiably false.
But in an admitted change to the usual proceedings, rather than a Lucasfilm or Disney representative, this counter was instead given by none other than Kennedy herself.
Directly asked by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Mike Fleming Jr. as to “What is the truth?” regarding her current employment status, the embattled Star Wars franchise boss asserted, “The truth is, and I want to just say loud and clear, I am not retiring.”
“I will never retire from movies,” she continued. “I will die making movies. That is the first thing that’s important to say. I am not retiring. What’s happening at Lucasfilm is I have been talking for quite some time with both Bob and Alan about what eventual succession might look like. We have an amazing bench of people here, and we have every intention of making an announcement months or a year down the road.”
“We are in lockstep as to what that’s going to be, and I am continuing,” said Kennedy. “I’m producing the Mandalorian movie right now, and I’m also producing Shawn Levy’s movie, which is after that. So I’m continuing to stay at Lucasfilm and looking very thoughtfully with [Disney CEO] Bob [Iger] and [Co-chairman] Alan [Bergman] as to who’s stepping in. So that is all underway, and we have every right to make that announcement when we want to make it.”
As for who was currently in the running for her top spot, Kennedy declined to comment, telling Fleming Jr., “I can’t say who it is because there’s just an internal process that goes on inside a large corporation and a publicly held company, as to how we go about making deals, finalizing decisions and making announcements. There’s nothing unusual about that, and we’re in that process.”
“There has never been any chaos because we know exactly what the plan is,” she added. “And we’ve been talking about it, as I said, nonstop for the last couple of years because for obvious reasons — I’m not going to be here forever. George asked me 13 years ago to step in, and now I’m looking at who’s going to replace me. And as I said, we have a bench of people internally to handle the business, the creative side. The job has grown also since I stepped in. There was no streaming, there weren’t a lot of the things that we’re involved in right now going on. So it has grown.”
All in all, another day, another rumor of Kennedy’s exit that ultimately fails to come to fruition.
At this point, it seems that those Star Wars fans who are actively looking forward to the end of Kennedy’s tenure would best do well to just wait until she outright and personally confirms her exit, rather than getting their hopes for some sort of public consequence for her poor stewardship of their once-favorite franchise.