News Star Wars Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy Shares Star Wars Movie Updates Ahead of Her Retirement Star Wars movie musical chairs will continue until morale improves By Molly Templeton | Published on January 16, 2026 Credit: Lucasfilm Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Lucasfilm As has been rumored for a long time now, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy is retiring—though only from Lucasfilm, not from the business of making movies. (Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan will take over running the company.) Her exit interview with Deadline is full of enthusiasm about returning to producing films (and some questionable enthusiasm about “new technology”). The interview is also somewhat full of tidbits about the various Star Wars films we’ve heard about over the last decade or so, and their status. It has been somewhat difficult to keep track of exactly who is and isn’t making a Star Wars film since The Rise of Skywalker. Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron was happening, and then it wasn’t, and then it was again—but there’s no mention of it in Kennedy’s rundown. Notably, there’s also no mention of the Rey-centered film set to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, which last got an update in early 2025. Kennedy doesn’t say much about Star Wars TV series, other than that Dave Filoni “just finished directing some of Season 2, and writing all the episodes” of Ahsoka’s second season. The Mandalorian and Grogu and Star Wars: Starfighter (pictured above) are definitely happening. The Mando movie is mere months away, somehow. Filming on Starfighter has wrapped (in her interview, Kennedy repeatedly says that Starfighter is a standalone, but hedges about it just enough that one might begin to suspect that it will not stay that way if it’s successful). “I’ve got to tread a bit carefully here,” Kennedy says when asked about the progress on the many Star Wars films that have been announced. Here’s what’s what: Taika Waititi, whose Star Wars film was announced in 2020, has turned in a script that Kennedy calls “hilarious and great.” Donald Glover has turned in a script. Kennedy does not offer any details on that one. James Mangold and Beau Willimon “wrote an incredible script, but it is definitely breaking the mold and it’s on hold.” This may be the most frustrating bit of news; Mangold’s Star Wars film was announced in 2023 and was expected to be set years and years before any existing Star Wars movies, in the early days of the Jedi. Willimon, a writer on Andor, came on board the project in 2024. “It was just great,” Kennedy says of the Scott Burns script turned in by Steven Soderbergh and Adam Driver. That would be The Hunt for Ben Solo, a script which reportedly was greenlit by Lucasfilm before getting canned by parent company Disney. Star Wars Rebels co-creator Simon Kinberg, whose potential Star Wars trilogy was announced in late 2024, is working. Kennedy says, “He wrote something that we read in August, and it was very good, but not there. 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.” When asked about Rian Johnson, who was at one point expected to direct an entire Star Wars trilogy, Kennedy evades the question pretty neatly. “Once he made the Netflix deal and went off to start doing the Knives Out films, that has occupied a huge amount of his time,” she says, adding that she thinks Johnson was “spooked by the online negativity.” (She also says that he “made one of the best Star Wars movies.”) Kennedy’s main point—that Knives Out took over Johnson’s time—lines up with what the director himself has said. Last summer, he told Rolling Stone of the potential trilogy, “Nothing really happened with it. … The short version is Knives Out happened. I went off and made Knives Out, and was off to the races, busy making murder mysteries. It’s the sort of thing if, down the line, there’s an opportunity to do it, or do something else in Star Wars, I would be thrilled. But right now I’m just doing my own stuff, and pretty happy.” In summary, Kennedy says, “Mangold’s is really on the back burner as is Soderbergh’s. 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. Dave, I know that Dave and Lynwen are very much on board with what Simon’s doing, and that would be a new trilogy. In the timeline of things, that takes you well into 2030 plus. So that’s really what’s up next.”[end-mark] The post Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy Shares <i>Star Wars</i> Movie Updates Ahead of Her Retirement appeared first on Reactor.