Candid Star Wars Interview Gestures At A New Hope For The Franchise
There’s no beef in space.
The Star Wars fandom loves to make life imitate art by imagining huge conflicts between the stars of the franchise, both in front of and behind the camera. Take, for example, the sequel trilogy directors J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson. Online discourse made it seem like fans had to pick sides, but the two were perfectly cordial colleagues in the same industry.
Now, another Star Wars showrunner has spoken out about another figure many fans have considered to be his rival, but the truth is a lot less dramatic — and a great omen for the future of Star Wars as we know it.
Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter for a conversation about how Andor reflects our current time, especially in the light of recent events in the Twin Cities. “It’s just sad how predictable and lame and obvious and wrong it all is,” he said. “Fascism is just a total fail in the end. It eats itself up in the end. So this will have been an incredible waste of time, an incredibly wasted opportunity, and an incredibly dark period in America’s history that it may never recover from.”
Tony Gilroy is the mastermind behind Andor, one of the biggest successes in Star Wars’ recent history.
But aside from the unfortunate political significance of Andor, Gilroy was also asked about the present state of Lucasfilm and Star Wars, especially with Kathleen Kennedy retiring and being replaced by Mandalorian creator Dave Filoni, along with Lynwen Brennan.
Fans often position Filoni and Gilroy as two figureheads of different approaches to Star Wars TV. While Gilroy’s Andor was a smaller-scale story, it was incredibly sophisticated with its themes and structure, even if it didn’t include many familiar characters. Meanwhile, Filoni’s The Mandalorian loved to incorporate familiar cameos and mission-of-the-week structures.
However, despite rumors to the contrary, Gilroy says his relationship with Filoni and fellow Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau is very cordial. “We’ve always gotten along with those guys, and we’ve never had anything but high praise for everything that they’ve done,” he said.
Gilroy and Filoni have only met a handful of times, and their relationship is cordial.
In fact, he credits The Mandalorian for much of Andor’s success. “We only have our show because of them, and we’ve always said that was true. There’s no Andor without The Mandalorian. It would not exist. So it has never been anything but cordial and pleasant, ever, ever, ever, ever.”
That’s enough “ever”s to thoroughly debunk this rumor, but what does this mean for the future of Star Wars? Now that Filoni is (partly) in charge of Lucasfilm, many were wondering if that meant the studio would stop taking chances on shows like Andor. But if these two are on pleasant terms, then another Gilroy show — or something in the same vein — could be on the horizon.
Gilroy was in fact, asked if he’d be disappointed if Andor was the only show like it. “If I was going to do that job, I would rather go down swinging,” he said of Filoni’s new gig. “I’d rather go down in flames. As low-risk as my life is, my creative life is pretty high-risk, so I’d like to swing away. Safety has never been one of my navigational principles. But disappointed? It doesn’t matter to me what they do. I wish them luck. I really do.”
