Squid Game legend Lee Jung-jae has scored a mega new role in Disney+’s new Star Wars show The Acolyte and I can’t fkn wait to see him in action. Something to fill your The Mandalorian cravings? Yes please.
Deadline first reported that Lee Jung-jae was set to star as the show’s male lead. Amandla Stenberg (Bodies, Bodies, Bodies) will have a leading role while Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim) has also been cast. Oh, we are absolutely eating well.
While we don’t have tons of details so far, what we do know sounds pretty epic. The Acolyte is set about about a hundred years before the first Star Wars prequel film The Phantom Menace.
In the Star Wars universe, that’s an era called The High Republic when the Jedi Order was in its prime. The Acolyte will focus on the last days of that period, so it already sounds spicy as hell.
Political intrigue? The growing threat of the Sith? Lightsabers? I’m hooked.
I’m also manifesting at least one character as well-dressed as Luke Skywalker and his Chanel boots.
luke skywalker always fabulous with his black prada glove, gucci jedi robe and the chanel boots pic.twitter.com/h0AM2cjSyx
— zed (@vadersanakin) December 25, 2020
Lee starred as Seong Gi-hun in Squid Game, and has since been nominated for a Critic’s Choice award, a Golden Globe, an Emmy and a Screen Actors Guild Award — which he won. He’s also won six Baeksang Arts Awards, a South Korean film, theatre and TV award.
We’re talking a simply next-level cast here.
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The Acolyte will also be written, directed and executive produced by Russian Doll creator Leslye Headland so it seems we’re in safe hands. I’ll be manifesting a Natasha Lyonne cameo.
Headland told Vanity Fair that The Acolyte would be a “mystery-thriller”.
“My question when watching The Phantom Menace was always like, ‘Well, how did things get to this point?’” she explained.
“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 also touched on the Jedi’s complacency and power in this era.
“The Jedi uniforms are gold and white, and it’s almost like they would never get dirty. They would never be out and about,” she said.
“The idea is that they could have these types of uniforms because that’s how little they’re getting into skirmishes.”
There are reports that the central “acolyte” will actually be a trainee Sith, so we could be getting a Star Wars story told from an intriguing new perspective. At the moment, it’s unclear who Lee, Stenberg or Turner-Smith will portray — and most importantly, what colour their lightsabers will be.
We don’t have a release date for The Acolyte just yet, but it’ll hit Disney+ from a galaxy far, far away at some point in the not too distant future.
