ANDOR Writer Tony Gilroy Developed the Series as If It Wasn't STAR WARS
If you were to take the Star Wars out of Andor, there would still be a great, interesting, and thrilling story to watch play out. Andor is a perfect example of smart storytelling, and it’s the kind of storytelling evolution that I’ve been waiting for with the Star Wars franchise.
During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, series creator, writer, and producer Gilroy discussed his development of the series and explained that he developed it as if it wasn’t Star Wars. The result of that is the first real “adult” Star Wars entry in the history of the franchise. Gilroy admits that having “reverence” for the source material is confining, and doesn’t leave much room for innovation. So, he worked to break beyond that and do something different. He explained:
“In every department, we’ve had all kinds of people come in, and they know it’s Star Wars, so they change their behavior. They change their attitude. They change their thing. An actor will come in off a Ken Loach movie or something, they’ll put on a Star Wars [costume], and all of a sudden, this great actor, who auditioned for you and didn’t know what it really was, starts acting differently. And you go, ‘Wait, no. Do your thing. You’re here because we want you to be real.’ So it’s a testament to the potent power of Star Wars. It really gets into people’s heads, but to change the lane and do it this way, it takes a little effort. It’s interesting.”
Before Gilroy came onboard Andor, there were a couple of other different versions of the series, but the nostalgia of the franchise is what he says boxed in many of the previous creative teams. At one point studio president Kathleen Kennedy asked for his thoughts, and that’s when Gilroy laid out a big plan to push the boundaries of Star Wars storytelling. He went on to say:
“I wrote this big manifesto for her. ‘This is what your show should be like. This is what you should never do. This is why this doesn’t work.’ So it was a crazy thing, and it was wildly ambitious. And they were like, ‘Well, that’s really great. Thanks for helping us know what’s wrong, but we could never do this.’ Then they tried a couple other things, and when everything had gone cold, there was a moment where, my God, streaming was whoa. Now we can really do it.”
It’s great to see that Lucasfilm eventually understood what Gilroy wanted to do and had the confidence to move forward with it. Andor is easily the best live-action Star Wars project since The Mandalorian.
The way that Gilroy is developing Andor is how Marvel should be developing their shows and projects. They need to focus on tell a great story, a story so good that if you took all the Marvel elements out of it, at the core you’d still have a great story. Now I wan’t to see Tony Gilroy develop a Marvel series!