I’m very encouraged by the viewership and the reviews for our new show, The Acolyte, this week.
Viewership from Variety:
“The Acolyte,” Disney+’s newest Star Wars series, reached 4.8 million views in its first day of availability. This marks the streamer’s biggest series premiere of 2024, according to Disney.
From GQ:
The opening sequence of Disney+’s latest Star Wars streaming series begins not with a massive ship crawling through space, but with a cloaked figure named Mae (Amandla Stenberg) strolling along on an idyllic planet and stopping to ask a villager one simple question: “Where’s your Jedi?” She enters a cantina, finds the local Jedi—Master Indara, played by Carrie-Anne Moss—drinking with some patrons, and declares, “I’m here to kill you.” What unfolds thereafter is a decidedly intimate and exceedingly well-staged martial arts battle wherein the young assassin follows through on her promise, taking down a proficient, lightsaber-wielding Jedi with a couple of ordinary knives.
Many others gave it a high average score approaching 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, including this one from SlashFilm:
It’s an exciting breath of fresh air I didn’t know I needed, and offers us something at once familiar but also genuinely unexpected.
What’s impressive about Leslye Headland juggling these different bits of influence in the “Star Wars” universe is that she’s succeeding. The first two episodes hum with life and new ideas, but also challenge our understanding of good and evil, right and wrong, and the age-old conflict between Jedi and Sith.
It’s been an absolute pleasure to work as a producer on the show with the entire team, and especially showrunner Leslye Headland. We all put a lot of heart into it and it’s great to see the show live out in the world where it belongs!
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