Last week Lucasfilm announced that Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from her role as studio president, a position she has held since Disney’s 2012 acquisition. Succeeding her are George Lucas’ protégé and Ahsoka creator Dave Filoni, who will oversee the franchise’s creative direction as co-president alongside former Lucasfilm General Manager Lynwen Brennan handling the business side of things. Kennedy still has an active hand as an executive producer of both Star War’s next theatrical offerings: May’s The Mandalorian & Grogu as well as 2027’s Starfighter and will continue to produce other projects independently. Kennedy’s tenure saw its fair share of highs and lows, especially contending with an often fickle fandom, but with multibillion dollar films under her belt her exit marks the end of an era.

It was a surprisingly noteworthy MLK weekend box office– outside of Avatar: Fire & Ash’s continuing reign, Marty Supreme became A24's top-performing film of all time with 80 million dollars domestically, surpassing Everything Everywhere All at Once, while Zootopia 2 became the highest-grossing animated film of all time globally with over 1.7 billion dollars, passing Inside Out 2. Meanwhile, Nia DaCosta's 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple opened below expectations with just 15 million dollars over the four-day weekend, falling well short of the 30-million-dollar debut of its predecessor and behind tracking projections of 20 million dollars. Despite the horror sequel’s muted debut, it’s been an unusually robust box office this January.

Netflix has revised its $83 billion dollar deal for Warner Bros. Discovery to an all-cash transaction valued at $27.75 dollars per share, simplifying the structure to provide greater certainty of value for shareholders and accelerate the path to a shareholder vote by April. The amended deal, unanimously approved by both boards, maintains the same per-share valuation while WBD stockholders will still receive additional value from shares of Discovery Global following its spinoff, with Netflix financing the deal through cash on hand, credit facilities and committed financing. This update comes on the heels of Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ renewed promise to keep WB studio films in theaters for at least 45 days before hitting streaming.

Prime Video has released a first look photo of Sophie Turner as Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider series, which has begun production.

Hans Zimmer, who has scored more than 500 movies and TV projects, will officially score the upcoming Harry Potter series for HBO Max in partnership with Bleeding Fingers Music, a composer collective that he co-founded.

Sons of Anarchy star Ryan Hurst has been cast as main character Kratos in Amazon's upcoming God of War series, which is currently confirmed for two seasons and has begun pre-production. Teresa Palmer was also cast last week and will play Sif, Thor’s wife and the goddess of family.

Cate Blanchett has signed a deal to reprise her role as Viking warrior Valka in Universal Pictures’ live-action How to Train Your Dragon 2.

Warner Bros. has set Jorge R. Gutiérrez to direct an animated feature centering on the classic Looney Tunes character Speedy Gonzales, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned.