'Ahsoka' is one of Disney's cheapest Star Wars productions. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Lucasfilm Ltd.

Pre-production of the second season of Star Wars streaming show Ahsoka cost around 30% less than the sum spent on its counterpart The Acolyte according to recently-released filings.

Released in 2024, The Acolyte became one of the most controversial instalments in Disney's Star Wars saga. Before the show even launched on the Disney+ platform there was a disturbance in the force as it was branded woke due to its diverse female-led cast. This was supposedly the driving force behind its rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes plummeting when it launched.

Just a day after the debut of The Acolyte's first episode its audience score stood at only 50% but even darker clouds soon began to gather. Overwhelmingly-negative reviews flooded in leaving The Acolyte with an audience score of just 19% which is lower than the notorious 1978 Star Wars: Holiday Special.

The low score was attributed to unjustified review bombing with the key evidence for this being that the show's Rotten Tomatoes critics' score stands at a more respectable 79%.

However, the proof of the pudding was the size of the audience as the show only hit seventh place on Nielsen’s Top 10 originals chart in its premiere week with 488 million minutes viewed. It climbed one spot in the second week but then experienced a dramatic fall from grace as it exited the list. In short, the show simply didn't appeal to the public.

The clearest evidence that it wasn't a commercial success came when Disney's Lucasfilm division scrapped plans for a second season just over a month after the curtain came down on the first one. It wasn't just because of audience antipathy.

As this report revealed, The Acolyte stayed within its set spending levels before filming began but blew its budget after the cameras started rolling. It ended up with costs of $230.9 million (£190.8 million) and there is no doubt about that.

The Acolyte was made in the United Kingdom which shines a spotlight on its costs. When studios film streaming shows in the United States they tend to combine the costs of them in their filings and don't break out the spending on each one. It's a different story in the U.K.

Studios filming in the U.K. get a reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country provided that at least 10% of their core costs are incurred there. In order to demonstrate this to the authorities, studios set up separate companies to produce each film in the U.K. and they are obliged to file legally-binding earnings releases. They show everything from the headcount and salaries to the total costs and the level of cash reimbursement.

The companies usually have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when filing for permits to film on location. The Acolyte was made by Disney's subsidiary Blue Stockings (UK) which is believed to be a reference to the show's leading ladies as the term refers to the educated, intellectual female members of the 18th-century Blue Stockings Society from England led by the critic Elizabeth Montagu.

Ahsoka too has a female lead but, unlike the Acolyte, she is a fan-favorite. Called Ahsoka Tano, the character made her debut in the 2008 animated feature film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. She was introduced as a 14-year-old apprentice of Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi master who turns to the dark side and becomes iconic Star Wars villain Darth Vader.

Famous for her zebra-striped headdress which splits into two, Ahsoka has a strong command of the mystical force and is often seen wielding two lightsabers. Audiences liked the character so much in The Clone Wars that Disney commissioned a live action series about Ahsoka which was released in 2023 and was filmed in Los Angeles with the same LED screen sets which were used to great effect in Disney’s other Star Wars spinoff The Mandalorian as this report explained.

Set after the events of Return of the Jedi, the third film in the original Star Wars trilogy, Ahsoka stars Rosario Dawson in the title role alongside Lars Mikkelsen, David Tennant and Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, a role he first played in the prequel movies two decades earlier. The show follows Ahsoka and her Jedi apprentice Sabine Wren who are stranded in a foreign galaxy while the remnants of the evil Galactic Empire launch an uprising against the heroic New Republic. In stark contrast to The Acolyte, the force was strong with this show.

Disney announced that the first episode had 14 million views in the five days following its release, making it the most watched title on Disney+ during the week of its launch. The studio defined views as total stream time divided by runtime, which The Hollywood Reporter claimed was equivalent to 784 million minutes of viewing

Nielsen added that the first two episodes were watched for 829 million minutes during their first five days putting Ahsoka in second place on its list of original series for the week. The series dropped down the list for the following weeks but remained in the top 10 for each episode. It returned to second place for the week of the finale even though audiences only rated the series 64% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics were much more generous, giving it 85% and this made a sequel all but inevitable.

In January 2024 Lucasfilm announced that a second season was in the works and will have eight episodes like its predecessor. However, this one was filmed in the U.K. and the company behind it is called Robot Dog Pictures (UK), believed to be a nod to Huyang, Ahsoka's loyal droid companion who is metaphorically the faithful hound of her journey.

After The Acolyte blew its budget, Disney made sure it didn’t make the same mistake again. Recently-filed financial statements for Robot Dog Pictures show that in the year to February 28, 2025 the company spent $33.7 million (£26.7 million) with only tiny expenses of $40,676 (£32,074) the previous year. Principal photography began two months after the date of the latest filings so they give an almost-complete picture of the pre-production costs for Ahsoka season two.

In contrast, in almost the same time (the period up to the month before filming began), $42.4 million (£38.3 million) was spent on The Acolyte. One of its biggest single costs during that time was the $5.1 million (£4.6 million) paid to the production crew. An average of 62 worked on The Acolyte every month compared to just 34 on the second season of Ahsoka.

The next filings for Robot Dog Pictures will be for the 12 months to February 28, 2026 and will cover the entire filming period (which wrapped in October last year) as well as a good deal of post production. These documents won’t be available until later this year but a glimpse into how many staff were involved during this period can be found now in separate U.K. filings which are focused specifically on personnel. They show that on April 5, 2025, around three weeks before filming began, 406 staff were employed to work on Ahsoka season two and 42% of them were female.

The key cast members will return for Ahsoka season two and all episodes have been written by its showrunner, Lucasfilm's president Dave Filoni, who also wrote every instalment in the first season. As he did in season one, Filoni will direct some episodes of the upcoming series with Bryce Dallas Howard directing two of them after previously helming instalments of The Mandalorian and other Star Wars series.

The filings show that Robot Dog Pictures was reimbursed $5.4 million (£4.2 million) bringing its net spending down to $28.3 million whereas The Acolyte settled at $35.9 million in the corresponding period.

Clearly, filming and post-production will cause the costs of Ahsoka season two to rise considerably and there is plenty of time for that to happen. It was originally due to be released later this year but it was recently announced that it has been postponed to early 2027. The delay doesn't just allow costs to rise, it also allows Lucasfilm to ensure it is money well spent. Time will tell if the stars align.