Andor creator Tony Gilroy has given credit where its due to Disney and Lucasfilm for allowing him some generous creative freedom with his Star Wars series, which he also revealed recently came with a hefty final price tag.
“I worked on ‘Rogue [One]’ so I knew what the [permissible] levels of violence were, and actually the rules loosened up considerably [for Andor],” Gilroy said during a panel at ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas, adding that he “very consciously” began the series in a brothel to test his limits.
“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,” he explained.
The same goes for Season 2, which openly grapples with both genocide and sexual assault. Gilroy said it was “pretty effortless” to include the scene in Episode 9 where Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) describes the Empire’s actions as a “genocide” during a speech to the Galactic Senate.
However, he did acknowledge that he thought carefully about the decision, understanding the weight it would hold.
“I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million,” he said. “For 24 episodes, I never took a note. We said ‘F*ck 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 comes with responsibilities.”
Asked to reflect on the reaction to Season 2, Gilroy added that it’s “really sad how many people can find a place to put this [word] in some place that’s meaningful for them.”
“I’ve been allowed to start using the word ‘fascism’ the last couple weeks. That’s liberating,” he went on. “But I don’t think it should be any surprise or even be too slippery or complicated for people to understand the road I have to walk to do all this; to maximize the audience and protect the investment of a really brave [company.]”
Gilroy’s remarks on Andor‘s budget confirm a report last year from Forbes, citing a yearly U.K. financial report required from productions that take advantage of tax rebates there. The show’s second season was buffeted by delays related to the dual strikes, which can naturally result in ballooned production costs. Disney has not officially commented on the show’s budget.
Per the report, the production cost of Season 2 alone was well over $290.9M. That’s more than the production cost of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, which Deadline pegged at $275M. On the other side of the ledger was a hefty $129M tax rebate for the entirety of the show.
Andor ended its critically acclaimed run last month. Gilroy planned the series as a two-season adventure with the second season leading up to the events in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, where audiences were first introduced to Luna’s Cassian Andor.
Gilroy spoke about the finale with Deadline, also acknowledging how his series has disrupted the Star Wars canon in more ways than one.
