Ahead of its premiere in a few weeks, more details are available on “Star Wars: Andor” and how it is quite different to the various other Disney+ series set in that universe so far.
Showrunner Tony Gilroy spoke with Variety recently about the show which is aimed at an older audience and a more ‘radical’ idea of his own devising than the ones that Disney was initially pitching to him. Of the original pitch, he says:
“It was in the vein of Cassian and K-2 are like Butch and Sundance, and they’re gonna storm the Citadel. [That’s] very hard to sustain over a long haul.”
Gilroy responded with his own idea for where the show might go: ” was such a crazy idea. It was so radical, so out there.” That idea involved a more drawn-out story of Dickensian detail about how Andor goes from a nobody to a key player in the formation of the Rebel Alliance. Gilroy says:
“I wanted to do it about real people. They’ve made all this IP about the royal family, in essence. It’s been great. But there’s a billion, billion, billion other beings in the galaxy… Why not use the ‘Star Wars’ canon as a host organism for absolutely realistic, passionate, dramatic storytelling.”
The studio ultimately agreed with him and had him write several episodes and serve as showrunner. The show boasts over 200 actors with most playing brand new characters and a lot of the action following “lowly factory workers and midlevel technocrats” as opposed to Jedi elite and politicians.
Indeed one rule for Gilroy was to avoid deliberate callbacks, saying any legacy characters who appear are “never fan service… it’s never cynical. It’s always meant to be there. It’s always protein; it’s never icing.”
The first three episodes of “Star Wars: Andor” arrive on Disney+ on September 21st. Check out a clip from the show below, which sees Diego Luna’s character explaining a heist to Stellan Skarsgard’s Luthen.
