‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Begins Filming in the United Kingdom

In addition to Andor’s first season on Disney+, fans of the Star Wars series have a lot to look forward to in the coming months. The highly anticipated third season of The Mandalorian is premiering in February, and Ahsoka, led by Rosario Dawson, will also be released soon. Production for both Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew with Jude Law has already begun, but they’re not the only ones. The slate of upcoming live-action shows will also include The Acolyte from showrunner Leslye Headland– who is also the co-creator for Russian Doll.

Bespin Bulletin recently announced that The Acolyte has gone into production at Shinfield Studios. In a recent interview, Headland described the show as a mystery thriller set in what appears to be a prosperous and peaceful time period. She also confirmed that the series is set about 100 years before The Phantom Menace occurred. Some of the new cast members include Amandla Stenberg and Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game), Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim), Manny Jacinto (The Good Place), and Charlie Barnett (Russian Doll).

Headland went on to state: “A lot of those characters haven’t even been born yet. We’re investigating the political, personal, and spiritual issues that arose during a time period not many people know about. My question when watching The Phantom Menace was always something along the lines of ‘How did things get to this point?’ How did we arrive at a place where a Sith lord could infiltrate the Senate without any of the Jedi noticing? What went wrong? What are some potential scenarios that might have led us up to this moment?'”

“What’s wonderful about Leslye is she knows it all. I mean, she’s read a gazillion books inside the E.U. There are little bits and pieces that she’s drawing from that no one has explored yet in the onscreen storytelling.” understanding the Expanded Universe like few others. “She is a gigantic Star Wars fan,”

Vanity Fair recently interviewed Headland, in which she revealed that she brought the idea to them as a major mega fan. According to Headland, they were very enthusiastic about it and thought it would be best placed in an era they haven’t explored yet. The Mandalorian and other television projects have been relying on legacy characters, so this was definitely something new for them.

She continued, “I was coming at it as a fan who was much more into the RPG that the Extended Universe feeds on. I came hard at that in the ’90s, and then got introduced to [Star Wars:] The Clone Wars. I knew the timeline really well. And I was like, ‘I think if you want to explore Star Wars from the perspective of the bad guys, the best time to do it is when the bad guys are wildly outnumbered. When they actually are essentially the underdogs, for lack of a better term.’ So this would be that era.”

More details to come on Star Wars: The Acolyte.

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