This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Mid-Year Status Report On ‘Star Wars’ Films; Plus, ‘The Acolyte’ Episode 5 Highlights
Happy Sunday, and welcome back to the latest edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away“. We’re now at the halfway mark of 2024, and it’s time for an insight look into how it’s been going for Star Wars. I hope everyone at Lucasfilm had a nice time at Skywalker Ranch for the 44th Annual Lucasfilm Picnic! And for everyone else, I hope you had a nice weekend too! I, myself, checked out two new movies in theaters, A Quiet Place: Day One and Kinds of Kindness!
It’s been a mostly silent week in terms of Star Wars news, as most of the fandom is still healing from some traumatic events that took place during the latest episode of The Acolyte. The actors, along with showrunner Leslye Headland, took part in multiple post-mortem interviews trying to explain away some of the decisions made, and hinting at where we go from here. We’ll be talking more Acolyte below; before then, let’s do a quick catch-up.
Three Things That May Have Flown Casual
- All Things Acolyte: As I mentioned, I’ll be offering some expanded thoughts on the new episode of The Acolyte, but the week has been filled with interview pieces surrounding the show. Here are Leslye Headland, Amandla Stenberg, and Manny Jacinto talking to EW, and here are Charlie Barnett and Dafne Keen, along with Jacinto, again, showing off their impressive fight training. Also, noticed that new, disturbing helmet? You can now put it on your night table! Well, only if you pre-ordered it already, as it’s now sold out!
- Major Andor news: Orson Krennic is coming back, Andor season 2 director Alonso Ruizpalacios confirmed in a yet-to-be-released interview with The Playlist revealed. This further reaffirms: Never. Trust. An. Actor.
- Video game news: A new old Star Wars video game is coming to modern consoles; this time, it’s Star Wars: Bounty Hunter! Aspyr worked on the new port, which will be available on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Steam. Comes out Aug. 1, with Boba Fett as an unlockable character.
The Acolyte Strikes Back
Leslye Headland needed a week like this. The first four episodes of The Acolyte may not have hit with fans the way the showrunner expected, but she made one big gamble when conceptualizing the series, and all roads were leading to this last episode. The character work may not have been on par with what I would have wanted, and the mystery of who’s under that mask may not have been as clever as she perhaps hoped. But all Headland needed was to both shock us with one twist after another in “Night”, and also entertain us to oblivion with some of the best lightsaber-on-lightsaber choreography since The Phantom Menace. And The Acolyte finally delivered on the promise of what it wanted to do.
I was starting to doubt my initial judgment on the series after I binged the first four episodes just before the premiere on June 4. I basically reached the conclusion that the series was fine, but a little underwhelming because it just didn’t live up to the expectations that its own story set up. Except for Master Sol and Osha, I wasn’t that invested in the characters — and even in those cases, it was mostly because of the actors’ performances rather than the scripts’ own merits. After seeing the reactions by some of the more reasonable parts of the fandom, I started to see more of the flaws and fewer of the qualities.
But episode 5 finally paid off my initial gut reaction. The series was a little underwhelming indeed, but part of it was because it just hadn’t reached the full potential of the story it desperately wanted to stumble into. I don’t think episode 5 redeemed it all, but I think it was at least able to wipe the canvas clean and infuse me with excitement for where it might go next.
I don’t think I can equate the deaths of Jecki and/or Yord to some of the most shocking moments of Game of Thrones, but damn it, they absolutely worked for me as mid-season twists. The reveal of The Stranger was a no-brainer, but at least the writers were smart not to pretend like it was a big reveal. And for the love of me, can someone actually explain why Mae cutting her hair with a lightsaber is causing such an uproar? I think it’s dumb that she got Osha’s look right away, but I don’t think that’s because of how she did it.
I’m still concerned that the best episode of the show so far is the one that’s been the least story-heavy. I’m not 100% invested in Osha and Mae yet, but I don’t mind their chaotic shifts as much as some of the people I’ve talked to. I am a bit concerned, however, that Osha and Mae will be indistinguishable from now on, yet at the same time, I’m excited to see how Amandla Stenberg is able to perform the differences between them now that most of their looks are the same.
Let’s see where things stand a few days from now. A few, final notes: did you notice the Stranger knocking out the Jedi lightsabers? That’s because his suit was made of a material named cortosis, which is pulled from old Star Wars books. Here‘s Josh Atkins’ explanation of where it comes from and what it does. He also wrote this episode’s spoiler discussion. Finally, check out Jay, Luke, and Tyler on this week’s 100-minute SWNN Live! episode breaking it all down. We also have a full breakdown of our YouTube efforts of the week here.
A Mid-Year Status Report On Star Wars Films
Something is going on with the Star Wars feature film slate. The extent of it, I don’t quite know yet, but it seems obvious to me that not everything is going according to the plan Lucasfilm had set in January. Back then, they announced The Mandalorian & Grogu to be the next feature film, one that would film this year. A couple months later, Disney confirmed that it would be taking the May 22, 2026, spot.
It’s been known for a while that the film would be starting production in the summer, with a listing by Production Weekly setting the start date for June 17. Now, this publication has a spotty track record with Star Wars productions, having been dead-on with stuff like The Mandalorian season 3, but way off with other projects that never took off.
For now, there’s nothing to suggest that the summer shoot for The Mandalorian & Grogu won’t be happening. For all we know, they might be kicking off tomorrow, July 1 — or they’re just waiting for July 8, to get the holiday out of the way. Reports about Sigourney Weaver joining the cast a few weeks ago seemed like a good indication that pre-production was advancing well, but it’s been pretty silent on that front since then. Given that it’s a movie spinning off from a TV show, it’s possible that Weaver is the only high-profile newcomer. Also, we all know how Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni like to keep everything under wraps, and most casting recruitments tend not to leak to the press. They might have even started production, for all we know. (I was admittedly expecting official confirmation when this happened, as Lucasfilm did when both Ahsoka and The Acolyte began, not to mention The Rise of Skywalker way back when. Maybe an official cast list, too.)
So The Mandalorian & Grogu is probably fine. Lucasfilm is working hard on it as we speak, and at most, filming has been delayed for a couple weeks, and at best, everything stays on track. This doesn’t seem to be the case with the other tentpole that was supposed to go up this year.
It’s been a week of conflicting reports surrounding the New Jedi Order film from director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. Insider Daniel Richtman first said it would start shooting in September, with later reports saying it would not happen this year. Jordan Ruimy’s account over at World of Reel was particularly worrying — though it’s not exactly news for readers of that site. Another report from earlier this year painted a pretty bad picture of the movie; sources told SWNN at the time that it was untrue, though.
But are alarms going off now? It doesn’t surprise me to hear that the film will not start shooting this year, as Lucasfilm has its plate full with The Mandalorian & Grogu and trying to set up Ahsoka season 2 as soon as possible. Other projects we don’t know about are surely in the pipeline, and we might learn about one or two at D23 this August. But, as usual, there’s more to it.
Daisy Ridley had said in the spring that she was supposed to read the script for the film, which Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight was working on, imminently. As of mid-May, that hadn’t happened yet. But to me, the most obvious issue with Knight working on this movie has always been this: the British scribe is supposed to move over to the Peaky Blinders movie during the summer ahead of the film’s September shoot. If a script isn’t locked in by now, the chances of the film shooting this year are pretty slim.
This is where World of Reel‘s bit about Lucasfilm possibly looking for another writer starts to line up for me. Now, Ruimy set it up as Lucasfilm wanting to move on from Knight after being dissatisfied with what he came up with — and though that may be true, I look at it as their way of trying to keep this project alive while Steven Knight goes off to Birmingham for one last ride with the Shelbys.
Another small tidbit to take into account here: When reporting on Sigourney Weaver joining The Mandalorian & Grogu, Jeff Sneider had said that it would be possible that New Jedi Order would shoot after James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi (w/t), especially as that movie had just recruited Beau Willimon as co-writer, and Mangold was wrapping his Bob Dylan biopic. At the time, I dismissed it given the fact that the Daisy Ridley-led movie was in a much more advanced stage, but perhaps there was something to that.
One final thing to take into account. Warner Bros. and Legendary just dated the next Denis Villeneuve film (likely Dune: Messiah, though not confirmed) for December 18, 2026, which Disney has also reserved for a Star Wars movie. We thought for the longest time that this would be the date for Daisy Ridley’s big return (in a George Lucas kind-of-rhyme, The Force Awakens opened on Dec. 18, 2015), but perhaps WB knows something we don’t. It also might be for the best in the long term. Two Star Wars movies in the same year, after more than six years without one? Sounded too good to be true, and also a bit overwhelming for general audiences.
But as usual, this is just my reading of the situation, my trying to line up everything we’re hearing about the new movies and make some sense of it. I suspect we’ll learn something new during D23, so let’s try not to take any of this for a fact, at least for now.
What did you think of the latest edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away”? Let me know your thoughts and suggestions down below in the comment section. You can also send them, or reach out with any information tips, directly via our Contact page.
Have a great week!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
