If Andor had to be described in a single word, you could confidently hitch your wagon to that word being ‘ambitious‘. The prequel to beloved modern Star Wars classic Rogue One, its MO of wanting to create the realest of real environments yet still remain firmly in the galaxy far, far away woulds require a fresh approach. Tony Gilroy touches on this in a recent Andor deep-dive in The Hollywood Reporter, noting that the production was fortunate to have been greenlit before the belt-tightening of recent times arrived.
Tony Gilroy was surprised when Lucasfilm proposed that he make a radically different kind of Star Wars series where he’d enjoy plenty of creative latitude: a prequel to Rogue One, the 2016 Star Wars film Gilroy helped improve with a script rewrite and reshoots. “The original mandate was: ‘Can you open a new lane for us? Can you find us a new audience?’” recalls Gilroy (in an interview conducted before the WGA strike). “‘If we back your play and use the down payment of the hard-core Star Wars community, can you make something, take it seriously, and make a new lane that we might build all kinds of new things from?’”
With that lattitude came a hefty price tag, said to be a quarter of a billion dollars.
Looking back, Gilroy sees Andor as a minor miracle. Given its steep cost (estimated at $250 million), franchise-expanding tone, and intensive mix of practical and special effects, it probably never would have been greenlit earlier — and probably wouldn’t be ordered now, either.
“We got lucky making this during the gold rush a few years ago. A lot of people now have cold feet, and you can’t do this show inexpensively,” says Gilroy. “I’m just so relieved at the reaction because we were making this huge, obscure thing and we knew it was crazy. Like, ‘Is this too much? Have we gone too far?’ There were no focus groups or test audiences. Now it will be good if we can stick the landing and go out strong.”
- Hardcover Book
- Blake, Olivie (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 592 Pages - 08/29/2023 (Publication Date) - Random House Worlds (Publisher)
