Dave Filoni Promoted to Chief Creative Officer To Oversee All Future ‘Star Wars’ Storytelling; Carrie Beck New Head of Development
Lucasfilm is undergoing slight structural changes in its leadership. Dave Filoni, former head of animation, who was promoted to Executive Creative Director at Lucasfilm a few years ago, will assume the title of Chief Creative Officer at the company, he revealed to Vanity Fair.
In the past, Filoni was brought on board projects once they were already in development, like the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, which he and Jon Favreau consulted on. Now, he will be there from the very beginning. He told the publication:
“In this new role, it’s opened up to basically everything that’s going on. When we’re planning the future of what we’re doing now, I’m involved at the inception phase.
“I’m not telling people what to do. But I do feel I’m trying to help them tell the best story that they want to tell. I need to be a help across the galaxy here, like a part of a Jedi Council almost.”
The announcement comes a month and a half after the end of Ahsoka on Disney Plus, the first live-action series he was the sole showrunner of. As Filoni explained, it was important for him, before taking on a bigger role at the company, to get his hands dirty in the day-to-day creative process of live-action development, after years in the animation division. The first step was to executive produce and direct a few episodes of The Mandalorian back in 2019, aided by the veteran Jon Favreau. With that experience behind him, he then took on the challenge of creating Ahsoka from scratch and bringing it to life (Favreau was an executive producer there too, but from all accounts, it was Filoni’s baby all along).
Now, he feels he has what it takes to guide filmmakers to achieve the best story they want to tell in a galaxy far, far away:
“To truly help filmmakers, it was really important for me to experience it firsthand. I can also lend a perspective on the challenges that telling these stories will present. I feel more capable of actually being helpful outside of just saying, ‘Well, Jedi are like this, and Sith are like this…’”
The Vanity Fair article also went out of its way to stress that everything that was announced at Star Wars Celebration this past April is still in the works and Lucasfilm fully intends to release their slate. That includes the live-action series The Acolyte and Skeleton Crew, which are in post-production at this moment, but also the feature films from Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, James Mangold, and yes, Dave Filoni. However, it’s still unclear what Filoni’s next step will be.
The season 2 renewal of Ahsoka is still not official, according to the publication, though Lucasfilm intends to keep expanding the story of the character in whatever way possible. According to Rosario Dawson, Filoni was working on an outline for season 2 earlier this year. Now that he has control over what stories Star Wars is telling, does he have the power to greenlight it?
It doesn’t seem that way, as there is another big change in the company. Carrie Beck, the veteran producer who worked hand in hand with Dave Filoni on Rebels and was an executive producer of Ahsoka, will also be having a brand-new title. Beck is now head of development at Lucasfilm, which means she will “originate and shepherd the next generation of Star Wars shows and movies.” She will be in charge of recruiting storytellers for future Star Wars shows and movies, before they go to Filoni to ask about what to do narratively (we’re oversimplifying it here, obviously). Kathleen Kennedy remains in the leadership seat, though it does seem like she will have fewer responsibilities and will be delegating some of her previous duties to both Beck and Filoni.
The next Star Wars project on the line is Skeleton Crew, which Dave Filoni executive-produced.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
