The Acolyte will be with us a week this coming Wednesday, and the pre-show push continues as SFX Magazine catches up with producers Rayne Roberts and Simon Emanuel. By all accounts, Leslye Headland‘s pitch for the show was a powerful one, enough to incite some real emotions from the production staff as Roberts explains.
“Leslye said it was Frozen meets Kill Bill in Star Wars. It immediately communicated a kind of emotional entanglement and also high-octane action. It was like, ‘I think I understand what that is,’ and it started a conversation that led to me elevating her pitch, ultimately up to Kathy. Leslye is an amazing storyteller and when she finally pitched Kathy, everyone was crying. It was that kind of meeting.”
Producer Simon Emanuel went further, picking up on the elements that excited him.
“The thing I picked up on and got very excited about was Kill Bill. One of the things we talked about really early on was action, and I really believe that, in these kinds of shows, action has to be a character. It can’t just be, ‘Give me a punch, give me a lightsaber fight…’ So I introduced Leslye to a guy called Chris Clark Cowan, who was our action designer, and part of the team who worked on the Darth Vader sequence in Rogue One. Leslye and Chris completely fell in love, and action became such a component of this story. For me, it’s the best action the franchise has seen – and there’s so much of it.”
