Kathleen Kennedy, who stepped down as president of Lucasfilm on January 15, will oversee the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games, LA28 announced this week. The 73-year-old producer takes over ceremonies and content from Peter Rice, who stays on as executive producer. She will work with creative director Ben Winston and production executive producer Scott Givens. The Olympic opening ceremony is scheduled for July 14, 2028, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium.
LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman called her “one of Hollywood’s all-time greats.” Kennedy said she is “thrilled he’s asked me to help bring it to life.” Her producing résumé includes E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future and Jurassic Park, and that résumé is the case LA28 is making. The case against her sits at Lucasfilm, where she spent more than a decade as president.
Disney paid $4.05 billion for Lucasfilm in 2012 and handed Kennedy the franchise. The Force Awakens crossed $2 billion worldwide in 2015. The Rise of Skywalker closed the Skywalker saga in December 2019 at roughly $1.07 billion. Solo: A Star Wars Story had already stumbled in 2018 with about $393 million worldwide. After Rise of Skywalker, no Star Wars film reached theaters for more than six years.
That gap ended on May 22, 2026, with The Mandalorian and Grogu, the film Kennedy produced in her final months at the studio. It opened to $81.67 million domestic against a $165 million production budget, and The Hollywood Reporter headlined the debut as a series-low. Through August 6 it had grossed $177.7 million domestic and $345.8 million worldwide, 2.1 times its budget. Disney announced her exit four months before that release, so the company shifted leadership before the film’s performance was known.
Disney’s January 15 announcement named Dave Filoni president and chief creative officer and Lynwen Brennan co-president, both reporting to Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman. Kennedy returned to full-time producing, with Mandalorian and Grogu and Star Wars: Starfighter among her projects. Bergman said, “We appreciate having her on board to produce our next couple of films.”
Her Deadline exit interview with Mike Fleming Jr. drew the sharpest reaction. Asked about the franchise’s low points, Kennedy said, “The lows are that you’ve got a very, very small percentage of the fan base that has enormous expectations.” On pleasing that audience she said, “I’m not sure there’s anything you can do about that, because you can’t please everybody.” On her record she said, “I wouldn’t do that any differently and I wouldn’t change anything that we’ve done over the years.” She also said, “I understand why some people may like certain things more than others, but that’s not going to change.”
The fan base she described as a small percentage is the audience that decides whether a $165 million Star Wars film clears its costs. A franchise president who sees no reason to change course, followed by a film that opened to a series-low, makes the question of what the studio learned hard to avoid. Disney’s answer so far has been new leadership and a producer’s credit for Kennedy on the next films.
The Olympics ask for something different from a franchise: one ceremony, watched live around the world, with no sequel to recover in. If Kennedy treats LA28’s critics the way she treated Star Wars fans, as a small group with unreasonable expectations, what happens on July 14, 2028?