Star Wars fans looking for epic lightsaber battles will find them in The Acolyte. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, The Acolyte cast discussed their upcoming Disney+ series and compared their action sequences to a standout battle in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
“If you loved that sequence with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and Darth Maul, I think you’re going to enjoy this show,” Manny Jacinto told EW.
“I will say too — not to shade’ but we have a lot more tangible physical moves than I saw in that fight,” Charlie Barnett added. “As badass as it is, there’s a lot more grounded work that goes into our stunt training and our stunt performances.”
The Acolyte will use fewer blasters and more lightsabers, meaning the show will feature more fight choreography and stuntwork. Dafne Keen likened the fight scenes to a “dance.”
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but I will just say it. There’s a lack of guns, which personally as someone who loves fighting and stunts and stuff, I love,” Keen said. “Because it gives you that body-to-body choreography — that dance feeling. It actually looks like a real fight as opposed to just I point and I shoot, which is kind of an easy cop out in a way. We get a lot of that body-to-body.”
What to Expect in The Acolyte?
The Acolyte is set 100 years before The Phantom Menace at the end of the High Republic. Plot details remain scarce, but it will be a Sith-led story about “a former Padawan reuniting with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.”
Amandla Stenberg headlines The Acolyte as the former Padawan. Lee Jung-jae will play a Jedi Master, with Keen, Barnett, and Carrie-Anne Moss playing Jedi. Jacinto described his character as a “regular guy who gets swept up into the High Republic world and the Jedi.” Other cast members include Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman, Margarita Levieva, and Joonas Suotamo as Kelnacca, a Wookiee Jedi master.
Leslye Headland is the creator and showrunner for The Acolyte. Principal photography began in October 2022 and continued in 2023. Filming wrapped in June 2023. The eight-episode series is scheduled to arrive on Disney+ in 2023.
