Details are starting to emerge from the shadows about the upcoming Star Wars Disney+ series The Acolyte thanks to this weekend’s Star Wars Celebration event in London.
As previously revealed by Lucasfilm, The Acolyte will be the first live action Star Wars content to step away from the decades’ long timeframe of the main Star Wars Skywalker family saga, being set a century earlier at the tail end of the High Republic era. Stories of the golden age of the High Republic era are currently being told in a coordinated series of novels and comics. We also have known that the series will focus on an apprentice (Amandla Stenberg) to a master (Lee Jung-jae) of the Dark Side of the mystical Force and be something more of a thriller than straight action adventure story. Also in the cast are Jodie Turner-Smith, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Rebecca Henderson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Dean-Charles Chapman, Charlie Barnett and Margarita Levieva.
While the section of the panel devoted to the show remained somewhat sparse on details, a few morsels did emerge –
- Series creator Leslye Headland (Russian Doll) stated that she wanted to set the show in a time where the “bad guys are outnumbered” and described the show as “Frozen meets Kill Bill.”
- As this is the furthest back in time a live action Star Wars project has gone, fans can expect to see some things about that they have not seen before.
- Joonas Suotamo, who took over the role of Chewbacca the Wookie from Peter Mayhew for the Sequel Trilogy and Solo: A Star Wars Story, will be playing another wookie in this series. This one is a Jedi Master named Kelnacca.
- Filming on the series is currently ongoing, but it is expected to wrap in “a few weeks.”
- Although no specific time frame was announced outside of 2024, The Acolyte will most likely be premiering earlier in the year, given that another Star Wars series, season two of Andor, is expected in August 2024.
