‘The Acolyte’ Creator Thinks ‘Star Wars’-Related “Content” On Track To Be “More Culturally Impactful” Than Actual Films
In light of the public’s ongoing turn away from traditional entertainment media and towards individual internet influencers, The Acolyte creator and showrunner Leslye Headland believes that user-created “content” about Star Wars, from the lowest piece of intellectually dishonest ragebait to the most lovingly crafted of analyses, will end up being “more culturally impactful” than the actual franchise itself.
Headland, who in the year or so since her Disney Plus series’ cancellation has been serving as the executive producer for the Hulu limited series Dying for Sex, offered this sobering prediction for Star Wars‘ future during a recent interview given to TheWrap’s Adam Chitwood.
Met with the observation from her host that “There was a lot of unfair vitriol about The Acolyte online, and for it to be the first Star Wars show to be publicly canceled – Lucasfilm had never done that”, the industry producer admitted, “Really the whole thing with The Acolyte was always a major risk.”
“It was a new part of the timeline. It was all new characters. It was a part of the lore where you couldn’t use a Storm Trooper, you didn’t have the reference of the politics and war that Tony Gilroy has brilliantly exploited in such a genius way in Andor. But all that iconography and all those visual references are original trilogy references, and our references were the High Republic novels and the publishing initiative and then the prequels, specifically with the lightsabers.
“I also think that any gripes creatively with the show are completely valid. That’s people’s reaction. It’s usually their reaction to their own reaction. But like I said the show was always a risk. It’s the old adage of the first one through the wall is the bloodiest. And this is very similar to coming back to your question about the company, it was just very much, ‘Let’s shoot for the sky.’ Let’s just go for it. So I have no regrets, and I’m absolutely obsessed with Star Wars.
“I still am, and I love my show, and I know that it was wonderful. And honestly, the designers that worked on the show are more responsible for it — because of what Star Wars is, creating that world is honestly harder than creating the narrative and the dialogue and the characters, that stuff I’ve done. It’s more hiring the right people, and all of those people were brilliant.”
From there pressed as to how she felt about The Acolyte being “attacked” and “weaponized by certain parts of the media”, Headland, opting to keep her thoughts “to the personal rather than the professional” and spoke specifically to the deluge of responses the show received from the “Star Wars recap/criticism/lionization fandom community”.
“These guys I’ve known for years and years. So when I got the information from others about what the weather report was, there was this real concern from friends of mine or co-workers of mine that saddened me. I also was like, ‘I know who these guys are.’ You don’t have to tell me who’s talking about it or how bad it is online, I know exactly who they are. I supported them on Patreon.
“There are some of them that I respect, and there are some of them that I think are absolutely snake oil salesmen, just opportunists. Then, of course, there are the fascists and racists. So it runs a gamut. It isn’t just one thing or the other. So I think that if you’re in part of the fandom, you understand the genre and the tone of particular channels and creators. So in some ways I wasn’t surprised, and then in other ways I was disappointed. I think you always do that when you create something, it’s just that Star Wars is on a massive level of visibility. “
To this end, Headland then posited that, given just how pervasive and lucrative Star Wars content was, it had become an industry unto itself – and one that had likely become more relevant than any of the franchise’s output itself.
“The content that is being put out by the streamers or the studios is being snatched up by these other creators, and so commentaries, synopses, live videos, all of the ways that these creators make money — through viewer-based ad revenues and their Patreons — there’s a lot of money to be made. And by the way, have at it. Get your coin 100%. But it revealed to me that there is a misunderstanding between the studios and that engagement. They think of it as fandom, and in ways it is, but studios use it almost like a focus group.
“It made me start to think, rather than these fans are toxic, or this thing is being mean to me, it made me think more that the content being made about Star Wars will ultimately be more culturally impactful than actual Star Wars I believe we’re headed into that space. Those IPs will continue to make money, but I don’t know how much they will affect the next generation as much as the content that is being created around those events, IP films and television shows.
Drawing her thoughts to a close, Headland ultimately asserted, “That is a proper business model rather than a bunch of mean people. It’s a lot more financial than I think people realize, and as somebody that really has supported a lot of those channels financially and with my eyeballs, some of that stuff is probably the only content that a younger generation is seeing.”
