Star Wars: The Acolyte Begins Filming in the UK

Andor is currently in the midst of its first season on Disney+, and it’s not the only Star Wars series fans have to look forward to. The long-awaited third season of The Mandalorian is debuting in February, and the Rosario Dawson-led Ahsoka is also coming soon. Both Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew with Jude Law have started production, and they’re not the only ones. The slate of upcoming live-action shows will also include The Acolyte, which has begun production in the UK. The Acolyte hails from showrunner Leslye Headland, who is the co-creator of Russian Doll.

According to Bespin Bulletin, The Acolyte has begun production at Shinfield Studios. During a recent interview, Headland described the series as a mystery thriller set in a prosperous and seemingly peaceful era. She also confirmed that the series is set roughly 100 years before the events of The Phantom Menace. The new series is set to star  Amandla Stenberg and feature Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game), Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim), Manny Jacinto (The Good Place), and Charlie Barnett (Russian Doll). 

“A lot of those characters haven’t even been born yet,” Headland explained. “We’re taking a look at the political and personal and spiritual things that came up in a time period that we don’t know much about. My question when watching The Phantom Menace was always like, ‘Well, how did things get to this point?’ How did we get to a point where a Sith lord can infiltrate the Senate and none of the Jedi pick up on it? Like, what went wrong? What are the scenarios that led us to this moment?’”

“She is a gigantic Star Wars fan,” Kathleen Kennedy previously shared of the writer. “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.”

“The truth is that I, as a major mega fan, came to them with this idea. And I said, ‘I think the best place to put this is in an era you guys have not quite explored yet,’” Headland revealed to Vanity Fair earlier this year. “They were very enthusiastic. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to explore that [existing] world, but I think that they already were because The Mandalorian and a lot of the other television projects were really relying on legacy characters.”

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.”

Stay tuned for details on Star Wars: The Acolyte.