The Most Iconic Cult Classic Sci-Fi Thriller Ever Had a Surprising Impact on a 1-Season Disney+ Series

3 days ago 6

DONNIE DARKO, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, 2001, (c) Newmarket/courtesy Everett Collection

Published Feb 8, 2026, 9:00 AM EST

Back in 2021, Hannah’s love of all things nerdy collided with her passion for writing — and she hasn’t stopped since. She covers pop culture news, writes reviews, and conducts interviews on just about every kind of media imaginable. If she’s not talking about something spooky, she’s talking about gaming, and her favorite moments in anything she’s read, watched, or played are always the scariest ones. For Hannah, nothing beats the thrill of discovering what’s lurking in the shadows or waiting around the corner for its chance to go bump in the night. Once described as “strictly for the sickos,” she considers it the highest of compliments.

New behind-the-scenes details from The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte reveal that The Acolyte’s most unsettling character — the Stranger — carried a surprising nickname during production, one inspired by one of Jake Gyllenhaal’s most iconic films. According to the book, the Stranger, portrayed on screen by Manny Jacinto, was referred to internally as “Frank” during preproduction. The nickname was a direct nod to Frank the Bunny, the eerie, grinning figure from Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult sci-fi film Donnie Darko.

The reference wasn’t incidental. It became a creative shorthand for the tone and psychological discomfort the team wanted the Stranger to evoke — something uncanny, unsettling, and difficult to emotionally place.

Why the Stranger Was Called “Frank” During 'The Acolyte's Production

As The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte makes clear, the Stranger is one of creator Leslye Headland’s most personal creations. Headland describes the character as a vessel for her own philosophy around freedom, identity, and belonging.

“In ‘Night,’ he says something that I would say is a good summation of how I feel moving through the world, which is that all he wants is freedom. When he says, ‘the Jedi say I can’t exist,’ there is something about my experience in the world that has felt that way to me. Sometimes walking through life, with its highs and lows, can feel like you’re not allowed to be yourself, that you have to follow certain rules of society. To be free of that is something I find really enticing.”

That emotional core directly informed the Stranger’s visual design — particularly his mask. Concept artists explored a wide range of disturbing imagery while developing the Stranger’s look, but one element remained constant from the earliest conversations: the grin. “That was very important from the beginning,” said creature effects supervisor Neal Scanlan. Headland immediately follows that thought in the book, explaining why the smile was non-negotiable.

“There’s some psychological thing that happens to your brain when you see a smile like this one.”

During preproduction, that unsettling smile led designers to nickname Jacinto’s character “Frank,” referencing Donnie Darko’s grinning, inhuman figure. For weeks, the image haunted the costume and creature departments as artists searched for the right balance between something never-before-seen and something that still fit within Star Wars’ established visual language. The final helmet emerged from a deeply collaborative process. “The Stranger’s mask is a good example of how a lot of the design elements come out of some combination of creators,” Headland said. “The final helmet is a collaboration of at least four departments — creatures, costumes, the stunt team, and visual effects — working together.”

The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte is available now. Stay tuned at Collider for more.