Hollywood is staring down what could be the most disruptive technological transformation since the birth of the motion picture industry itself.
Artificial intelligence threatens to fundamentally alter how movies and television shows are written, designed, animated, edited, dubbed, marketed, and potentially even performed. It could dramatically reduce production costs, eliminate jobs, create entirely new jobs, undermine traditional studio infrastructure, and force the entertainment industry to reconsider what it even means for a human being to “make” a movie.
So naturally, Hollywood has spent the last several years quietly figuring out how to navigate this brave new world.
And one of the people leading those conversations is… Kathleen Kennedy.
Yes. That Kathleen Kennedy.
According to a new report from Richard Rushfield at The Ankler, the longtime former Lucasfilm president and American Film Institute dean Susan Ruskin have spent nearly three years quietly convening filmmakers, actors, Hollywood executives, and major figures from Silicon Valley for private discussions about artificial intelligence and its future in filmmaking.
The entertainment business may be standing on the precipice of seismic change, and one of the people Hollywood’s power brokers have apparently turned to for guidance is the executive who just finished one of the most controversial and disastrous stewardship runs in modern franchise history.
You really couldn’t make this up.
Kathleen Kennedy Has Been Quietly Leading Hollywood’s AI Talks
The meetings reportedly began in November 2023, immediately following the bitter Hollywood labor strikes that put artificial intelligence near the center of the industry’s existential debate.
Rather than holding public conferences, Kennedy and Ruskin organized a rotating series of private, off-the-record gatherings bringing together people from Hollywood and the technology industry.
The Ankler reports that those rooms included Oscar-winning filmmakers, major actors, studio executives, and Silicon Valley figures.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm attends the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
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The effort eventually expanded into a much larger gathering of roughly 120 participants, with the discussions producing the group’s first public framework for how Hollywood could approach generative AI.
A separate recent AI summit hosted by AFI and Google reportedly included Kennedy alongside Ben Affleck and representatives connected to companies including Google, Meta, Paramount, A24, and Lucasfilm.
This isn’t some fringe discussion happening outside the studio system.
Some of Hollywood’s most powerful people are trying to figure out how the entertainment industry survives and adapts to AI.
Kennedy has been helping bring them together.
To Be Fair, The Actual Proposal Isn’t Crazy
There is an important distinction here.
Hollywood has not appointed Kathleen Kennedy its Supreme Leader of Artificial Intelligence, and this isn’t simply a “Kathleen Kennedy AI plan.” Susan Ruskin has been deeply involved in organizing the discussions, and the resulting proposal was developed through conversations among a much larger collection of people.
And parts of what they produced actually make sense.
The framework, called “Human Generative Workflows,” attempts to stop Hollywood from treating every application of artificial intelligence as though it were the same thing.
A Seedance 2.0 created AI fight between Disney’s Wolverine and DC’s Superman – X, @EnisPresheva
It distinguishes between conventional AI-assisted tools already commonly found in post-production, artist-controlled generative technology incorporated into a human-directed creative workflow, and primarily machine-generated material created through prompting.
The central idea is that technology should remain under meaningful human creative control rather than replacing the filmmaker.
That’s hardly unreasonable.
A clip from the Brad Pitt Tom Cruise AI fight – X, @RuairiRobinson
It also tracks closely with the position taken by the U.S. Copyright Office, which concluded in 2025 that generative AI output can receive copyright protection when sufficient expressive elements are determined by a human author. Merely entering prompts, however, generally isn’t enough.
So the issue isn’t necessarily that everything emerging from these meetings is ridiculous.
The issue is who Hollywood continues to believe should be steering the conversation.
Because Hollywood Apparently Learned Nothing From Star Wars
Kennedy is unquestionably one of the most accomplished producers in Hollywood history.
Long before Lucasfilm, her résumé included E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Schindler’s List, and numerous other enormously successful films.
But her nearly 14-year tenure running Lucasfilm became something very different.
Disney officially announced on January 15 that Kennedy was stepping down as Lucasfilm president, with Dave Filoni taking over as president and chief creative officer and Lynwen Brennan becoming co-president. Kennedy returned to full-time producing.
Cartman as Kathleen Kennedy in South Park – Paramount+
There were tremendous financial successes during Kennedy’s tenure. The Force Awakens was a box office phenomenon, Rogue One crossed $1 billion worldwide, and The Mandalorian became one of Disney+’s defining early hits.
But the era was also marked by an extraordinary amount of instability surrounding Star Wars.
Solo: A Star Wars Story disappointed commercially in 2018, after which Disney abandoned its rapid-fire theatrical release strategy. Reuters noted earlier this year that the film’s performance helped push the company toward television and away from frequent theatrical releases.
The franchise then went years without another movie in theaters following The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. It returned in 2026 with The Mandalorian and Grogu, a film produced by Kennedy. The movie failed on a spectacular level, actually coming in under Solo and redefining what Star Wars theatrical failure looks like.
Pedro Pascal unmasked in The Mandalorian – YouTube, Star Wars
The sequel trilogy remains bitterly divisive. Lucasfilm repeatedly announced film projects that changed direction, stalled, or disappeared. Filmmakers came and went. Meanwhile, Disney flooded its streaming service with Star Wars television projects of wildly varying reception.
Kennedy ultimately left the president’s office with Lucasfilm’s flagship franchise in a dramatically different position than the virtually untouchable cultural juggernaut Disney purchased in 2012.
And now we’re supposed to look at Hollywood’s next enormous technological challenge and think: Kathleen Kennedy should help figure this out?
AI Could Tear Hollywood’s Entire Business Model Apart
That’s what makes this so much bigger than another conversation about whether somebody used generative AI to create concept art.
AI has the potential to undermine enormous portions of Hollywood’s existing economic structure.
Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars on traditional production if increasingly sophisticated tools can dramatically reduce the cost of visual effects?
What happens to animation pipelines, background performers, and dubbing?
What happens when actors can license digital likenesses rather than physically appear, or when independent filmmakers gain access to production capabilities that previously required an entire studio?
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: (L-R) Leslye Headland, Dave Filoni, Chief Creative Officer, Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm attend the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
And perhaps most importantly for the studios themselves: What happens when sophisticated production technology becomes cheap enough that owning massive soundstages, armies of employees, and billion-dollar infrastructure is no longer the competitive advantage it once was?
These aren’t theoretical questions anymore.
The U.S. Copyright Office has already spent years examining AI-generated works, digital replicas, training data, and the economic implications of artificial intelligence for creative industries.
Hollywood knows what’s coming. That’s why these meetings are happening.
Hollywood Keeps Turning to the Same People Who Got It Here
And that may be the most revealing aspect of the entire story.
Hollywood has spent years struggling to understand why audiences are abandoning traditional entertainment.
Studios chased streaming at enormous expense, cable television is collapsing, the theatrical marketplace has become increasingly dependent on major events, production costs exploded, and numerous established entertainment brands have lost cultural relevance.
Meanwhile, YouTubers and independent creators can reach audiences Hollywood executives once required billion-dollar corporations to access.
Now AI is arriving and threatening to accelerate that disruption exponentially.
LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: (L-R) Daisy Ridley, Kathleen Kennedy and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy attend the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 attends the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Disney)
Yet when Hollywood’s establishment gathers behind closed doors to discuss the future, who does it turn to?
The establishment.
The same executives, producers, institutions, and industry power brokers who presided over the last era are gathering to determine how everyone should survive the next one.
Kathleen Kennedy isn’t personally responsible for Hollywood’s problems, nor is every idea emerging from these meetings necessarily bad.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 15: Kathleen Kennedy arrives at the special 3-episode launch event for Lucasfilm’s original series Andor at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on September 15, 2022. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
But she couldn’t possibly be a more perfect symbol of the industry’s instinct to seek salvation from the exact same institutional class that has repeatedly struggled to recognize how rapidly the entertainment landscape around it is changing.
Hollywood may be entering an entirely new age. Its solution?
Apparently, Kathleen Kennedy.
How do you feel about Kathleen Kennedy heading up talks on AI in Hollywood? Sound off and let us know!
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