It’s become something of a recurring theme over the years for various rumors to make the rounds positing that Kathleen Kennedy’s days as the president of Lucasfilm could be numbered. Disney CEO Bob Chapek may have recently come right out and said in a very public and even more definitive fashion that she’s not going anywhere, but that’s hardly going to dampen the speculation.
The four names continuously touted as her potential successors are Jon Favreau, Kevin Feige, George Lucas and Dave Filoni. Out of those four, Favreau and Filoni are the two directly employed by Lucasfilm to work on the Star Wars lineup for Disney Plus, while Lucas and Feige aren’t under contract with the studio but do have plenty of experience running a production company, although the latter does also have a deal in place to oversee a new blockbuster set in a galaxy far, far away.
A new report is once again touting Favreau as Kennedy’s replacement, based on an article decrying the latter’s handling of the Star Wars brand throughout the entire Disney era. While it’s something a huge number of fans would love to see, it’s also entirely based on conjecture and hearsay, with the source article leading to various online personalities giving it the old ‘I told you so’, and the even more incredulous claim that the notoriously and often laughably unreliable, not to mention very much anti-Kennedy, YouTuber Doomcock was right all along.
As always, then, best not to read too much into this one for now, but if the stewardship of Lucasfilm were to theoretically change hands, then Jon Favreau does stand out as one of the best placed and most qualified candidates to steer the ship.
