Speaking at the ATX Television Festival (via IndieWire), Tony Gilroy has shared the total cost of $650 million for both seasons, and how he had to fight hard to the show’s second season budget after Disney told him that “streaming is dead”.
Gilroy confirmed Andor cost an eye-watering $650m — that’s more than any of the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy movies, and almost double the budget of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Still, Gilroy said Disney had ultimately paid — and agreed to fund Andor’s equally-expensive second season — despite the show’s lower viewership than Disney+ hit The Mandalorian, and wider concerns about the ongoing profitability of high-cost projects designed for Disney+, after a spate of costly but disappointing Marvel series.
“I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million,” Gilroy said, going on to emphasise the fact that Disney had been hands-off when it came to Andor’s content. Indeed, the show includes the kinds of things you don’t normally see or hear in a Star Wars project — such as discussion of rape and genocide, and scenes set in a brothel.
“For 24 episodes, I never took a note,” Gilroy continued, though noting the one time Andor did make a change. “We said ‘F*** the Empire’ in the first season, and they said, ‘Can you please not do that?’” (This refers to the line of dialogue spoken by Maarva in Andor’s first season finale, which ultimately was changed to “Fight the Empire.”)
“In Season 2, [Disney] said ‘Streaming is dead, we don’t have the money we had before,’ so we fought hard about money, but they never cleaned anything up. That [freedom] comes with responsibilities.”
These responsibilities essentially meant turning in a show of the quality that befitted Andor’s sky-high budget — something most critics now agree Gilroy succeeded in.
“Season 2 of Andor builds on nearly everything that worked so well about season 1, and continues fleshing out the prequel era of Star Wars,” IGN wrote in our Andor season 2 spoiler-free review. “Gilroy and company manage to weave the dramatic irony inherent in a prequel series into the storytelling itself, making Andor season 2 the most engaging the Star Wars franchise has been in a long time.”
Stream Andor on Disney+ now.
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