This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away: When Will We See the First Trailer for ‘The Acolyte’?
Happy Sunday, everyone! Welcome back to “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away“, as we come to the end of a very interesting week for Star Wars. At least one that started really strong and ended on a slower note. For our newer readers, this is the new entry in a series of articles we publish every Sunday in a newsletter style, in which I recap what’s been going on this past week in the franchise, and make some analysis/educated guesses as to what might happen next. Today we’ll be talking about The Acolyte!
Before we dive in, you might be interested in checking out our recap of The Bad Batch‘s three-episode premiere (you can also read my written review here) on our YouTube live show, SWNN Live!, where Nate, Tyler, and I blabbed for an hour-plus about those three episodes, as well as other news that hit over the week. Tyler and Brian also had a new episode of The Timeline Show on Monday, in which they discussed George Mann’s Quest for the Hidden City.
Three Things That May Have Flown Casual
- Hot rumor of the week: Angela Bassett may have taken a meeting at Lucasfilm regarding a Star Wars role, insider Daniel Richtman said on his Patreon Page. No further details were revealed, but can we start ringing the agency bells regarding the Daisy Ridley-led movie starting to cast?
- Shawna Trpcic continues to leave a mark: The award-winning costume designer who worked on The Mandalorian and Ahsoka was announced this week as a Costume Designers Guild Award winner for her work in the Ahsoka season 1 finale. Unfortunately, she passed away last October. She’s a multiple-time Emmy nominee and could get yet another posthumous nomination for her work in Ahsoka, which did not qualify for this year’s ceremony.
- A week full of small announcements: I know this is cheating, but there have been so many minor announcements this week that I’m bumping all of them into a single bullet point on this quick rundown. We got a comic preview for May 2024, a Hot Toys reveal for Ariana Greenblatt’s Ahsoka figure, the original Battlefront games are being re-released on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, and PC on March 14, we got word of new titles coming to the Essential Legends Collection saga, two new, academic-style books from DK Publishing were announced, Asajj Ventress’ two lightsaber hilts are coming on a limited edition box set, and Star Wars as a brand is coming to the platform fighter Brawlhalla.
When Will We Get a Trailer for The Acolyte?
I’ve always been the one trying to calm everybody down when it comes to Lucasfilm not releasing a trailer. That’s simply not how marketing works in streaming, and though we might hear about a trailer for the show being ready, marketing windows are not defined by when the promos are cut or the interviews are performed, but rather when the PR department thinks it will have the biggest impact.
Trailer windows for films are getting even shorter with each year that passes. Remember when The Force Awakens dropped its first teaser more than a year in advance? Or Batman V Superman, Suicide Squad, or Justice League did the same? Those days are long gone, and with streaming, even more so. Today, Disney Plus can just drop the trailer for The Bad Batch on a random Tuesday and announce the new season is coming out a month later. Marvel Studios just did the same with X-Men ’97.
That was animated, of course, and live-action is a bit different, though not by much. Most trailers for live-action Star Wars series have been tied to conventions, from two of the three trailers for Andor to the first teaser for Ahsoka or the first trailers for The Mandalorian seasons 1 and 3. We have no conventions this year, and two live-action Star Wars shows coming, so we’ll have to look at other examples to try to make an educated guess.
Collider reported this week that Lucasfilm/Disney Plus are internally targeting a June 5, 2024, release date for Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte, which is at least a little earlier than I was anticipating (late July/early August). Reps for Disney didn’t confirm/deny it, of course, but we’ll assume it’s true for now (They are also saying that frequent Jordan Peele collaborator Michael Abels will be composing the score; I liked his Nope work, so count me in!). It’s an interesting date for a variety of reasons we’ll discuss in a moment, but let’s just focus on a tentative marketing schedule.
If the date sticks, it’s not too far off from the premiere of Obi-Wan Kenobi back in May 2022 (May 25, later pushed to the 27th). The date announcement was made in mid-February, on the day that The Book of Boba Fett concluded its run. The first trailer was released during Disney’s annual shareholder meeting, on March 9.
While this qualifies as being tied to a larger event, it does come within that two-to-three-month window that streaming shows on Disney Plus are given for marketing: The Mandalorian season 2 came out on October 30, and the trailer was released on Sept. 15 (the date announcement was made Sept. 2); The Book of Boba Fett got its date announced on Sept. 29, with the trailer coming out on Nov. 1 (released on Dec. 29). The final release date for The Mandalorian season 3 was made on December 1, with the final trailer released during Monday Night Football, on January 16 (released March 1). The second trailer for Andor was released on August 1, as they announced a three-week delay for the series (pushed to Sept. 21).
So many dates, but what do they mean? To watch out for news on March 5! That is when the three-month ticking clock would start, if the final date is indeed June 5, and dropping such announcements when they have an exact number of months before the show comes out is something they’ve done before. (Plus, it’s also a Tuesday, and we have our theories at Star Wars News Net that they love their random Tuesday announcements.) Disney’s annual shareholder meeting is happening at the beginning of April, so they could wait for that, but I highly doubt it.
In addition, they need an all-killer-no-filler campaign that also highlights all aspects of the new worlds and set of characters The Acolyte will introduce. They have done it before with The Mandalorian, which felt fresh and distinct from everything else they’d done, but now they have to do it again. They will need all three months for that, and I’m guessing they will come out of the gate very strong, with a release date tied to the first trailer for the show — either both on the same day, or back-to-back.
Because this date has leaked to the press (and again, we’re assuming it’s true) I’m guessing that the wheels are already in motion, which would support claims that we’ll be getting real news on The Acolyte very soon — I’d be shocked if by this time in two weeks we haven’t heard anything about it. Or at least I’ll assume they’re pushing it from the early June window.
And that would also make sense, because this week we learned about something else. Two of this year’s heavy hitters are also coming out around that time, with Prime Video confirming The Boys season 4 is coming out on June 13, and David Zaslav essentially confirming a June release for House of the Dragon season 2 (he said Q2, but The Sympathizer is on until the end of May on HBO). So all three of those shows coming out within a month?
That seems like a dream to me, but also a bit of a nightmare in terms of news coverage. Also, and perhaps most importantly, a nightmare for publicity departments trying to fight their way into consumers’ eyeballs. This isn’t a box office competition, but by running all three of those shows at the same time, someone will get knocked out. Think of people who subscribe to only one or two platforms at a time. (I know many of our readers like to wait to binge a full season, but we’re talking about the average viewer who learns about what’s on by logging into their go-to platform and checking out the banner; those are the people you want to be hit with news notifications on their phones from websites like this one.)
We went through a similar situation in late summer 2022, when She-Hulk, House of the Dragon, Andor, and Rings of Power all released within a month of each other. Only two of those shows actually delivered strong Nielsen numbers, the new Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings series, and the buzz on the latter was (unfortunately to me) pretty much null. And that was with the curiosity factor behind it, and one of the biggest marketing campaigns ever.
I’ll be honest, it seemed like a pretty smart move for Lucasfilm to drop this in June and get ahead of everyone else. However, if they are going to face such strong competition that month, it might even be smart to wait for July or August. There’s also Skeleton Crew to consider. Most of us are assuming (perhaps wrongly?) that it will debut around Thanksgiving. Can Disney Plus even survive this year by spacing out so much the few big shows they have? (I expect Marvel’s Agatha series to debut around Halloween, for thematic reasons.) Andor season 2 will be ready in Q1 2025, most likely, so there’s that to consider too.
Jocasta Nu’s Reading List
- SWNN: Nate has read The Art of Jedi: Survivor and has 10 things to share! A must-read if you’re a fan of the game (at least that’s what I’m told, admittedly I’m not caught up yet…)
- Game Rant: Dan Conlin runs with a theory someone posted on Reddit about Snoke’s backstory being tied to a surviving Mace Windu. Why are we still talking about this in 2024? I don’t know, but maybe some of our readers will find it interesting.
- CBR: Timothy Donohoo explains why Star Wars should embrace other genres outside of sci-fi (it’s actually fantasy, but whatever), and also pitches some possibilities. Interesting read, even if I disagree with many of them!
- Screen Rant: Why hasn’t there been any word on The Mandalorian season 4? Breanna Tauschek gives seven possibilities for why Lucasfilm hasn’t said a peep about the fourth season since The Mandalorian & Grogu‘s announcement. (I agree with #6)
One Last Thing…
Congratulations to Pedro Pascal, who won Best Actor at the SAG Awards this weekend for his role as Joel in The Last of Us. The big quote of the night came from him, once again:
“This is wrong for so many reasons. I’m a little drunk. I thought I could get drunk. I’m making a fool of myself but thank you so much for this! I’ve been in the union since 1999 so this is an incredible fucking honor. To the nominees, all of you, I can’t remember any of your names right now.”
Don’t ever change!
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.
