With an estimated production cost of nearly $650 million, more than twice the price of L’Ascension de Skywalker, the studio is still betting on its license while fans seem to be getting tired of it.
A galactic cost. The production of the series Andor produced by Lucasfilm (owned by Disney) over two seasons, is estimated at more than $645 million. The cost of season 2 alone will exceed $291 million. Much more than the last film released in 2019, Star Wars : L’Ascension de Skywalkerincluding the magazine Deadline estimates the cost at $275 million.
According to the magazine Forbes this is the highest budget ever recorded for a production Star Wars. This amount exceeds the $280.7 million spent on Star Wars: The Last Jedi in 2017 and the $243.8 million spent on The Force Awakens. The cost of the second season d’Andor is even expected to increase further, because the $291 million was spent in fiscal 2023. Which doesn’t even cover the entirety of filming which began in November 2022 but was suspended in summer 2023 due to the strike of SAG-AFTRA. It resumed in January this year and ended the following month.
A prequel to Rogue One
Intended as a prequel to the film Rogue One, Andor features the character played by Diego Luna and shows what life is like under the yoke of the Empire. The story takes place five years before the huge success of the original trilogy Star Wars. « There was in Rogue One this character who we knew how he got there and to what extent he was both accomplished and complex »explains Diego Luna in an interview with Figaro . « There was also the idea and the desire to write his story, from his origins to the odyssey which brings him to this precise place, during a revolution, during a period of history marked by significant events, involving entire crowds. Andor is a mythical figure, the symbol of a great upheaval. »
The series strategy Star Wars
In October 2012, George Lucas, the creator of Star Warsresells the franchise Star Wars to Disney for four billion dollars. He leaves behind a legacy of six films, made from 1977 to 2005. Since then, the big-eared firm has tried to capitalize on the saga. But the latest trilogy failed to live up to fans’ expectations. After two billion dollars in revenue recorded for Episode VII in 2015, Episode IX fell to just over a billion in 2019. Disney then chose to turn to series to breathe new life into the saga, with the freedom to delve deeper into characters and subplots without being limited to the films.
With the exception ofAndor and a few episodes of The Mandalorian the series derived from the saga Star Wars struggle to convince. This year the franchise even canceled the broadcast of the second season of its latest series on the Star Wars universe, The Acolytedue to the very mixed reception from fans. Since the release of the last film, Disney has released an average of two streaming series per year on its platform. As reported The Direct the multinational would consider reducing the number of series. A way to save on production costs and keep fans excited before the arrival of The Mandalorian and Grogu, the rest of the series The Mandalorian, and the tenth episode of Star Wars in theaters in 2026.
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