Leslye Headland

 ( 1980 Births ) 

Headland was hired by Netflix to direct the film Tell Me Everything, a thriller about marriage based on the young adult novel of the same name. She was also set to executive produce and direct a film based on the novel American Huckster: How Chuck Blazer Got Rich From—and Sold Out—the Most Powerful Cabal in World Sports for HBO Films starring Will Ferrell. She was additionally anticipated to executive produce and direct the first episode of the Fox series Sisters. In 2019, she signed a deal with Fox 21 Television Studios.

In June 2023, she was announced as the director of the upcoming adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid's 2017 novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

On April 22, 2020, it was unofficially announced through Variety that Headland would be the showrunner and writer for an upcoming Star Wars series on the Disney+ Streaming media. The series would be female-centric and would take place in a different part of the Star Wars timeline than other projects in the franchise. On May 4, 2020 (Star Wars Day), it was officially announced that Headland will write, executive produce, and serve as showrunner for her own Star Wars series for Disney+, entitled The Acolyte, which takes place during the final days of the .

It was revealed in an May 2024 The New York Times interview with Headland that the show cost $180 million (for eight episodes) and took four years to make, with the interviewer, New York Times reporter Brooks Barnes, suggesting the series would attempt to please fans of the original Star Wars and tell an "entirely new story...that showcases women and people of color." Some reviewers called the budget "staggering", "shocking", and "hefty" and compared it to the reported budgets of Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, Secret Invasion, Citadel, , and other series.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an average approval rating of 78% based 246 critics' reviews, and 19% based on 25,000 audience ratings. The Acolyte premiere was the second biggest for Disney+ in 2024 with 2.94M views for its first episode in its first two days. Parrot Analytics found that the audience demand for The Acolyte was 20.4 times the demand of the average TV series in the United States in the last 30 days. It remains exceptionally rated within the drama genre at the 99.3rd percentile. This indicates a high loyalty and engagement level from a dedicated audience, which should affect acquisition and programming decisions. The Hollywood Reporter, Coming Soon, Dan Abrams, The Independent, CBR, and The Root reported that the series was "panned" by audiences through Review bomb the series on public review sites like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb, with some critics saying that those who review-bombed the series were "annoying" and Racism. Others, such as Angela Watercutter of Wired, claimed that no review bombing was going on, but that people were only "expressing displeasure" for the series through audience scores. The series was canceled after one season, reportedly because viewership was not "strong enough" for a second season, and, in the view of The Hollywood Reporter, because of people's changing habits when watching streaming series and the erosion of "goodwill of the Star Wars brand" pertaining to its series. Others cited the show's cost as another reason for the show's cancellation. Deadline Hollywood reported that prior to this announcement Headland had indicated in interviews that she had "pitched her ideas for a second season."