Andor Creator Secured $650M After Disney Scrapped Streaming

Tony Gilroy, the creator behind the critically-acclaimed Star Wars series Andor, revealed he had to push back hard to secure the show's second-season budget after Disney told him "streaming is dead."

Speaking at the ATX Television Festival, Gilroy confirmed Andor’s staggering $650 million price tag — surpassing the budgets of any recent Star Wars sequel trilogy film and nearly doubling the cost of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Despite the show’s lower viewership compared to Disney+ hit The Mandalorian, and amid wider concerns about the profitability of high-cost streaming projects following a series of expensive but disappointing Marvel shows, Gilroy said Disney ultimately agreed to fund Andor’s equally costly second season.

"For Disney, this is a $650 million investment," Gilroy noted, emphasizing the studio's hands-off approach to the show's content. Andor notably includes topics rarely tackled in the Star Wars universe — such as discussions of rape and genocide, along with scenes set in a brothel.

Gilroy added, "Over 24 episodes, I never took a single note," though he did recall one exception. "We used the phrase 'F*** the Empire' in the first season, and they asked if we could please change it." (This refers to a line by Maarva in Andor’s first-season finale, which was later changed to "Fight the Empire.")

"For Season 2, they told us, 'Streaming is dead, we don’t have the same budget as before,' so we fought hard over the money. But they never censored our content. That creative freedom comes with responsibilities."

Every IGN Andor Review

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Those responsibilities meant delivering a series whose quality justified its enormous budget — a challenge Gilroy, according to most critics, successfully met.

"Andor Season 2 expands on almost everything that made Season 1 so effective, further enriching the Star Wars prequel era," IGN wrote in its spoiler-free review of Andor Season 2. "Gilroy and his team skillfully weave the dramatic irony inherent to a prequel into the storytelling itself, making Season 2 the most compelling the Star Wars franchise has been in years."