The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Studios announced today that, after nearly 14 years of leading Lucasfilm, President Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from her role and will transition back to full-time producing, including the studio’s upcoming feature films The Mandalorian and Grogu and Star Wars: Starfighter. Going forward, Dave Filoni will take on creative leadership of Lucasfilm as President and Chief Creative Officer, Lucasfilm, and Lynwen Brennan will serve as Co-President, Lucasfilm, with each having held senior executive roles at the studio for more than 15 years. The two will report to Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Alan Bergman, and their close collaboration will carry Lucasfilm into its next chapter of storytelling, with a strong foundation of creative vision and operational leadership guiding the studio forward.

Matthew Belloni, writing at Puck News:

Seven years between Skywalker and May’s The Mandalorian and Grogu is an inexcusable eternity in franchise filmmaking, and the projects Kennedy abandoned during that stretch could fill a Sarlacc pit. She announced new films with Rian Johnson, and Damon Lindelof and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and the Game of Thrones guys, and Josh Trank, and Taika Waititi, and Patty Jenkins (that one came with a hype video). She sidelined Gareth Edwards for Tony Gilroy in the middle of Rogue One, and fired Lord and Miller while they were shooting Solo despite signing off on their vision for a more comedic prequel. She booted Colin Trevorrow from Rise of Skywalker and paid a fortune for J.J. Abrams to undo Johnson’s creative choices in The Last Jedi because some nerds online were pissed. That’s just the stuff that became public. Over and over, sources pointed to a chaotic process at Lucasfilm. Now Donald Glover, Simon Kinberg, and James Mangold are awaiting the fate of their projects. Only Star Wars could keep convincing these Charlie Browns to line up to kick Kennedy’s football.

It’s harsh, but I can’t disagree. So many projects have been announced and so few have actually happened. Most of the output has been on television, and that’s not necessary bad, but the results have been mixed at best. To be fair, it’s probably not all her fault. Steven Soderbergh and Adam Driver pitched a film called The Hunt for Ben Solo and it seems that Kennedy was on board, but Bob Iger and Alan Bergman killed it. And even Marvel Studios has announced a few projects that didn’t end up happening, although Kevin Feige certainly has a much better track record.

As far as Dave Filoni being the new creative lead, I’m not excited. The great thing about the Star Wars universe is that it has the potential to tell many different kinds of stories, but it seems like Filoni is only interested in a few of them. He usually sticks to similar themes and tone, and sometimes it works out really well. The Clone Wars contains some of the greatest moments in all of Star Wars, but I don’t want everything to feel like that. Andor is radically different in both theme and tone, and that’s what elevates it to one of the best works in the entire franchise. I’m not sure that show would have been greenlit under his leadership. I hope Dave Filoni remembers that the world is wide enough for both Cassian and Grogu.