Tony Gilroy Just Lit a $650M Fire—And Disney's Already Running From the Smoke
Tony Gilroy just did the unthinkable—he dropped a cold, hard number that's been haunting spreadsheets and C-suites since 2022: Andor cost Disney over $650 million. That's for 24 episodes. On a platform Disney now calls a bad bet. And yes, the Internet is SCREAMING.
This isn't a budget. It's a coronation—and maybe a funeral.
Speaking at the ATX Television Festival, Gilroy dropped the number like it was casual dinner conversation:
“For Disney, this is $650M,” he said. “Never took a note.”
A $650M Star Wars series. No executive meddling. And now, Disney's quietly ghosting the very format they bankrolled it for.
Why This Changes Everything (Or Absolutely Nothing)
Let's be clear: Andor isn't just expensive—it's galactically expensive. That budget doesn't just eclipse previous Star Wars series; it obliterates them. We're talking more than The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens—combined.
Disney let Gilroy cook with MCU-level money—only to pull a 180 and whisper, “Streaming is dead.” They handed him a blank check. Then exited stage left.
It's like lighting a fireworks show on a sinking cruise ship.
While Warner Bros. guts Max originals and Netflix chases algorithmic sludge, Andor remains the weird outlier: a political, cerebral, slow-burn sci-fi opera that got the budget of Avengers: Endgame. And now sits awkwardly in a catalog Disney's trying to trim for tax write-offs.
The Hidden Story: A Prestige Gamble in a Dying Format
Let's time-travel: In 2019, streaming was the promised land. By 2023, it was a battlefield of layoffs, collapsed profit margins, and executive cold feet.
Andor began filming in 2022. Stalled by industry strikes. Resumed. Then dragged its way across the finish line in February 2024. That's not just budget bloat—that's development purgatory.
And yet Gilroy, ever the rebel, claims Disney never reined him in.
“We fought hard about money,” he said. “But they never cleaned anything up.”
Translation: They let the artist paint. Then took the gallery down.
It's the streaming version of building Versailles and then declaring monarchy a mistake.
Historically, this isn't new. Remember Marco Polo on Netflix? The $200M dud that died after two seasons? Or Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which cost $465M for one season—and still hasn't convinced anyone that second breakfast was worth it?
But here's the twist: Andor isn't bad. Critics love it. Fans call it the best Star Wars since the ‘80s. So what happens when a platform finally funds real art—and then decides it's too expensive to matter?
Would You Watch This or Burn $20? No Judgment. (Okay, Some Judgment.)
So now we ask: Is Andor a visionary gamble that'll age like Blade Runner—ignored at first, legendary later? Or is it just a beautiful Titanic that sank before the iceberg even hit?
Genius or garbage? Fight in the comments.
