Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down. She will return to producing films, which is what she did throughout the 80's and 90's until her appointment as President of Lucasfilm when George Lucas sold the company to Disney.

Kathleen Kennedy, who has served as president of Lucasfilm since 2012, is stepping down from her role. Dave Filoni will become president and chief creative officer, while Linwin Brennan will serve as co-president. Kennedy's last projects at Lucasfilm are The Mandalorian & Grogu, set for release in May 2026, and Starfighter, a Ryan Gosling film scheduled for 2027. 

The article also reports on Julian Garrity, executive producer of The Division, joining DICE to work on Battlefield, and the sudden rise in value of the Nintendo DS game Cory in the House due to an online campaign. Kennedy will return to producing films, having previously worked on several major Hollywood classics.

Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy steps down

Happy Friday, everybody! Max here with your fix of gaming and entertainment news. Coming up, Lucasfilm gets a change in leadership after 14 years, the executive producer of Tom Clancy's The Division is joining the Battlefield team, and a terrible Nintendo DS game is suddenly a valuable collector's item for very stupid reasons. Let's get into it. We've been hearing rumblings this would happen for a while now, but it's official. Kathleen Kennedy, who's been president of Lucasfilm since George Lucas stepped down in 2012, is now stepping down herself. Moving forward, Dave Filoni will act as president and chief creative officer, and Linwin Brennan will act as co-president. Filoni's a household name among Star Wars fans, thanks to his work on various projects including The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian, and his upcoming feature film directorial debut, The Mandalorian & Grogu. Meanwhile, Brennan has been with the company since 1999, holding various roles including president of Industrial Light & Magic and general manager of Lucasfilm as a whole. Kennedy's final projects will be The Mandalorian & Grogu, which hits theaters May 22nd, and Starfighter, the standalone Ryan Gosling film directed by Sean Levy, which just finished shooting ahead of a 2027 release. Speaking to Deadline, Kennedy gave an update on a few of the previously announced Star Wars movies, saying that X-Men producer Simon Kinberg had turned over a 70-page treatment for a proposed trilogy of films. She also said that Logan director James Mangold's distant prequel is on the back burner, as is Soderbergh's, referring to Adam Driver and Steven Soderbergh's much-discussed Hunt for Ben solo movie, which last we heard had been entirely shot down by Disney president Bob Iger. So if Palpatine can somehow return, maybe this project can come back to life as well too. Kennedy also noted that projects from Thor Ragnarok director Taika Waititi and young Lando actor-slash-childish Gambino Donald Glover are quote, still somewhat alive, but added, that's going to really be up to the new team to figure out. As for Kennedy, she'll be returning to her first love, which is producing films, you know, without having to run an entire company at the same time. And friendly reminder, she's got a pretty good track record. She helped produce, among other things, such classics as Indiana Jones, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Gremlins, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Schindler's List, just to name a few. Seriously, it's a pretty long list, so it'll be interesting to see what she works on next. Moving on, just days after hyping up the upcoming third entry in the Division franchise, executive producer Julian Garrity has been hired by DICE to work on Battlefield. The news comes by way of a social post from Garrity himself saying, quote, it's time for me to hang up my go-bag, keeping the watch, as I go on another grand adventure. The Division future burns bright and I can't wait for you to discover what the teams have been working on. It seems a little bit sudden, and just last week, Garrity appeared on the New Game Plus Showcase to give an update on the Ubisoft sequel, saying it was shaping up to be a monster, and the team was working hard to make something that would have as big an impact as the first game. Garrity's most recent shipped game was Star Wars Outlaws, also developed by Division Studio Massive Entertainment, which unfortunately wasn't quite the smash hit Ubisoft was hoping for that may have contributed to the implementation of a voluntary career transition program, which essentially allowed employees to volunteer to be laid off. EA and DICE, on the other hand, are in a very different situation. We're still waiting on sales numbers for December, but based on everything up through November, Battlefield 6 was one of, if not the best-selling game of 2025, so it is safe to assume that that publisher has big plans for the franchise moving forward, and apparently Garrity will bring some of his experience from working on The Division to whatever those plans may be. And finally, a nice stupid story to close things out. Earlier this week, online mischief-makers organized to dethrone Claire Obscure Expedition 33 as the highest-ranked game on Metacritic based on user rating. It's Usurper, the notoriously awful 2008 Nintendo DS game Cory in the House, based on the Disney Channel original series. It's a very bad game, everyone knows it's a bad game, but these fine folks thought it was a good idea to make it voted to be a good game, to dethrone an actually good game to make it take the place. You get the idea. Since then, Cory in the House has been bumped to the number two spot, but that hasn't stopped original copies of the game from becoming ironic collector's items, and they're now selling on eBay for well over $100 a pop, with some sealed copies being listed for triple that. So if you have a copy of this very bad game that everyone knows is a bad game, now is the time to sell it so that somebody else spends their hard-earned money on it. And if you're looking for a new game to play, maybe take those Metacritic user scores with a grain of salt, because sometimes people get a little silly with them. Personally, I'm much happier seeing a bad game get positively review-bombed for funny, stupid reasons, than a good game get negatively review-bombed for angry, stupid reasons, which unfortunately happens way more than it should. If you're looking for something to play this weekend that is infinitely better and cheaper than Cory in the House, right now at Humble you can grab Humble Choice for just $14.99 and score a curated bundle of PC games for January, including Sonic Frontiers, Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered, Hunt Showdown 1896, Etrian Odyssey 2 HD, Nice Day for Fishing, Metal Slug Tactics, Settlement Survival, and Wizard of Legend. This month's choice is available through February 3rd, so head to humblebundle.com and grab something fun to play this weekend. That is your fix for Friday, January 16th, 2026. I'm Max Scovel, and for everything gaming and entertainment, you are already in the right spot, IGN. Have a good one, everybody. I'll see you next week.

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