‘Andor’ Sets Record For ‘Star Wars’ Production Budgets, Pretty Much Guaranteeing Disney Never Takes A Swing Ever Again
In a media ecosystem where creativity is a distant afterthought to stock prices and profit, the recent reveal that Andor‘s production budget was bigger than that of any past Star Wars project all but assures that Disney will never let the franchise ‘swing for the fences’ ever again.
Though studios usually keep information regarding production budgets tightly under wraps, with any such expenditure ultimately being accounted for in their general spending reports, Andor‘s numbers have been made publicly available due to its filming taking place in the UK, whose government offers a 25.5% cash reimbursement to any film or series but only if a studio files an annual, itemized report detailing their financial operations.
And it was with the latest relevant filing for Disney’s UK-based filming subsidiary E&E Industries, itself established in 2018 to originally oversee Obi-Wan Kenobi before the COVID-19 pandemic shifted shooting plans to Los Angeles, that the House of Mouse revealed that through roughly 2022 (said reports are usually submitted well-after a relevant filming date in order to allow studios times to balance their accounts), the House of Mouse had spent an estimated total of $710 Million USD (~£542 Million GBP) bringing Cassian Andor’s backstory to the small screen.
To make matters even more expensive, this number is only set to grow with next year’s report, as Season Two premiered five months outside of the filing’s covered dates and thus does not cover the series’ final wrap-up costs.
With this report, Andor now stands as the most expensive Star Wars production ever put to film, beating out both The Acolyte, whose price tag came in at $230 Million, and The Force Awakens, which ran up a total bill of $533 Million USD (not adjusted for inflation).
And it is for this exact reason that, as posited above, Disney will likely never greenlight another ‘non-safe’ Star Wars project.
After all, though the series ultimately received critical acclaim and is now heralded as one of the franchise’s better entries, it only did so after creator Tony Giloy fought tooth-and-nail against Disney’s own monetary worries to get its budget approved:
“For 24 episodes, I never took a note. We said ‘F–k the Empire’ in the first season, and they said, ‘Can you please not do that?’” Gilroy told Variety earlier this year. “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.”
Further, despite pushing the boundaries of what a Star Wars story could be, Andor did not leave itself open to many merchandising opportunities, with its narrative being devoid of such usual cash grabs as lightsabers, new Stormtrooper variations, or uniquely-modified starships.
Thus, with Disney’s stinginess only increasing in recent years after a string of failures and their reluctance to produce anything that might challenge general audiences even in the slightest – just look at what happened to The Hunt for Ben Solo or even director Scott Derrickson’s original horror-centric visions for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – the cards on the table suggest that for the foreseeable future, fans can expect every new Star Wars film or TV announcement to center on either the Jedi, an established Original Trilogy character, or some new, never-before-seen faction – all of which can eventually be added to your various merch collections.
And who knows – for maximum saturation, maybe they’ll even get a push at Galaxy’s Edge.
