One of the very first projects announced for Disney+ was “Andor”, a prequel series to the movie, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, which follows Cassian Andor, who will discover the difference he can make in the struggle against the tyrannical Galactic Empire. He embarks on a path that is destined to turn him into a rebel hero.

Initially the show was planned to consist of five seasons, with each season representing one year in the build up to the events of “Rogue One”, however those plans were quickly changed, with the first season covering one year, while the second season consisted of four three episode chapters, each representing a year in the build up.

Prior to the launch of Disney+, both Lucasfilm and Marvel began planning for a world where they could expand their universes into expensive streaming shows, which would have the same quality as movies, all in an effort to make Disney+ as big as Netflix and grab as many subscribers around the world as possible.

The budget for “Andor” is incredibly high, over $650 million for both seasons, which consists of 24 episodes and Lucasfilm has also spent billions of dollars creating other high quality shows like “The Mandalorian”, “Obi-Wan Kenobi”, “Ahsoka”, “The Acolyte” and “Skeleton Crew”. 

During a recent Q&A at the ATX Television Festival, the creator of “Andor: A Star Wars Story” revealed some details on how things have drastically changed for future Star Wars projects for Disney+.

“I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million. For 24 episodes, I never took a note. We said ‘Fuck the Empire’ in the first season, and they said, ‘Can you please not do that?’ … 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.”

In the initial gold rush for streaming, Wall Street was only interested in growth of subscribers and just wanted the major studios to catch up with Netflix, but everything changed when Wall Street decided it was now more interested in profitability than growth.

This resulted in Disney embarking on a cost-cutting exercise, which was fueled by the return of Bob Iger as CEO. Between the pandemic and the massive shift in streaming, the entire strategy had changed.

For a while, Lucasfilm was on a roll, with three different Disney+ shows released in a single year, each costing over a hundred million dollars. But then everything shifted, Disney was no longer willing to spend billions of dollars on shows, that weren’t pulling in subscribers, weren’t getting the viewership numbers they wanted, hurting theatrical releases and also damaging the brands.  

Currently, only one live-action Star Wars series is known to be in development for Disney+: the second season of “Ahsoka”. Meanwhile, the fourth season of “The Mandalorian” has been reformatted as a theatrical release, and every other new live-action project is also slated to be a theatrical film.

There is little doubt that the push to streaming caused many problems for Lucasfilm and the Star Wars brand, as quality dipped and audiences became worn out.  The same thing has happened to Marvel Studios.

With Tony’s comments that Disney has said ‘Streaming is dead, we don’t have the money we had before”, makes all the changes in the past two years crystal clear.  The lack of announcements about new Disney+ shows from both Star Wars and Marvel, highlights that Disney is no longer willing to spend billions of dollars each year on content that isn’t performing.  Marvel has been able to adjust more easily to a reduced budget, with shows like “Agatha All Along” and “Daredevil: Born Again” having noticeably fewer special effects than early Disney+ shows such as “WandaVision” or “Loki”.   “Agatha” barely cost $40 million for the entire season, compared to over $200 million for “Secret Invasion”.

Star Wars is very different, it was never designed to be made on a TV show budget like “Star Trek”, Lucasfilm can’t make a Star Wars show on the same low budget and keep the same quality, hence the return to movies.  In animation, Lucasfilm can continue to expand the Star Wars universe, like it has with “Rebels” and “The Clone Wars”, which is why we’ve seen new shows announced for Disney+.

The second season of “Andor” has been a massive success for Disney+.  Audiences have loved the darker and grown-up side to the classic franchise, and so far, the viewership numbers for the show put it as one of the top three original streaming shows of the month.  But Disney can’t afford to keep spending on this type of show.

For example, it’s estimated that an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” costs $15 million per episode, almost half the cost of “Andor”, but that show gets many more viewers.   While ABC’s 9-1-1″ and “Will Trent”, is estimated to cost $10 million per episode.  The recent season of “Percy Jackson And The Olympians” is also thought to have cost less than $15 million per episode.  In contrast, FX’s “Shogun” cost an estimated $250 million to make, but it’s likely that the second and third seasons will have to be made on a higher budget.   

Tony’s comments just clearly showcase that we are unlikely to see other big-budget shows for Disney+ at the same scale as “Andor” in the future.   Streaming needs to be much more profit-focused, which it clearly wasn’t during the initial streaming war boom.    Disney can make shows that appeal to a larger audience and perform better, for far less money than a Star Wars show!

The golden days of creators being given truckloads of cash to create shows with virtually unlimited budgets are over.  Now they’ve got to be more frugal and return to a more sustainable model of making television shows, instead of making extra-long films that are then cut up into episodes.   In the long run, this is good for the overall streaming and television business, but for fans of big epic franchises like Star Wars, we are unlikely to see many huge-scale shows like “Andor” again.

Both seasons of “Andor: A Star Wars Story” are available to stream on Disney+.

What do you think of Tony’s “Streaming is Dead” comment?   Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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