Tony Gilroy, the creator behind the recently concluded Star Wars streaming series Andor, said that Disney executives told him “streaming is dead” and tried to hold back on some of his $650 million show budget. Yet, now Disney chief Bob Iger is touting Andor’s success.
Gilroy was sitting for a Q&A at the ATX Television Festival when he dropped this tidbit and noted that it was a continuing fight to get his 24-episode series funded.
“I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million,” Gilroy said of his final costs, according to IndieWire. “For 24 episodes, I never took a note. We said ‘Fuck the Empire’ in the first season, and they said, ‘Can you please not do that?’ … In Season 2, they 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.”
Gilroy did agree to cut the “fuck the empire” line, but for the most part he went full speed ahead with the more adult themes that made Andor a cut above most of the rest of the Star Wars universe of films.
“I worked on Rogue [One] so I knew what the levels of violence were, and actually the rules loosened up considerably,” Gilroy added. “Yeah, we can’t have skin, but I very consciously started the first scene in a brothel just to see what would happen and how far we could go. There’s sex. … It’s something that probably seemed at some point like it was going to be a big anxiety, and it really turned out to be a nothing-burger all the way through.”
Gilroy did get away with one serious plot point with the attempted rape scene in season two when an officer of the evil empire tried to sexually assault star Adria Arjona’s Binx character.
The series hit some serious notes, including the topic of genocide, and the more serious focus of the series was a noted by fans and critics alike. But Disney was clearly a bit more dubious during its production and viewership was still a disappointment.
Meanwhile, when discussing the state of the company during its quarterly investors report, Disney chief Bob Iger touted Andor as a great success, even though viewership was not as stellar as the company had hoped. Iger deemed the series a success and pointed to the series’ Rotten Tomatoes score as proof.
“The second season of Andor also just became the highest-rated Star Wars TV series or movie with a 97% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes,” he said during the investors event.
Still, despite his spin on what did and didn’t make a splash with viewers, Iger did admit that in the near term Disney is going to pull back on both Star Wars and Marvel projects. He said that both properties have been making too much content and that the glut of products is “diluting” the brands.
Disney’s entire streaming service is slipping, too. Early this year, Disney+ lost more than a million subscribers. Far from growing, Disney+ is contracting despite the billions the company has wagered on it.
Though Gilroy was able to wrangle his big Andor budget out of Disney, with the company’s huge loss of cash over its streaming service, Gilroy may find he is the last one to be favored with such largess.
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