- Andor creator Tony Gilroy reveals he needed to battle tooth and nail with firm execs to deliver his second season of the critically acclaimed Star Wars collection to life, as Disney instructed him “we don’t have the money we had before.” All instructed the 2 seasons and 24 episodes of Andor, the very best acquired Star Wars collection on Disney+, price $650 million to provide.
After a golden period of top-notch content material for the small display screen, is streaming now lifeless?
That was at the very least the message Walt Disney managers wished to impart on Andor’s acclaimed creator Tony Gilroy when he started filming the previous twelve episodes for the 126 million Disney+ subscribers.
“In Season 2, they said ‘streaming is dead, we don’t have the money we had before,” Gilroy stated on the ATX Tv Competition in feedback reported by IndieWire, “so we fought hard about money.”
All instructed, manufacturing prices for the 24 largely hour-long episodes throughout two seasons ran to $650 million, he stated. A supply conversant in the manufacturing instructed Selection the episodes price roughly $20 million every after tax incentives, much like the reported budgets of Warner Bros. Discovery’s Home of the Dragon and Severance from AppleTV+.
Disney didn’t reply to a Fortune request for remark.
Ever since Rian Johnson’s massively divisive The Final Jedi eight years in the past, Lucasfilm has struggled to win followers of George Lucas’ epic Star Wars trilogy again to his wealthy universe. A function movie hasn’t hit theaters since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, the disappointing conclusion to Rey Palpatine’s saga.
Andor has been the uncommon vibrant spot for the Disney studio, turning into simply the most critically acclaimed Star Wars entry on Disney+, in line with Rotten Tomatoes.
Turnaround at Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming operations
When the leisure large first launched its streaming service Disney+ in late 2019, cash was no object as CEO Bob Iger wanted an increasing number of content material to chase subscribers within the race with bigger rival Netflix.
However after a collection of costly flops together with Lucasfilm’s personal fantasy collection Willow and The Acolyte, set in the identical Star Wars universe as Andor, the money Disney was throwing round started to dry up.
In February 2023, Iger pledged to traders he would slash $3 billion in content material prices as a part of a wider plan to attain sustained profitability at its Leisure Direct-To-Client streaming operations.
Final month Disney posted its third straight quarterly working revenue for streaming, which now additionally totally consolidates Hulu after buying the remaining minority stake from Comcast. The Leisure DTC enterprise is now a core driver of earnings progress.
Within the first fiscal half by means of the tip of March, the section swung to $629 million working revenue from a lack of $91 million a 12 months earlier, greater than offsetting declines in its Linear Networks section comprised of broadcast and cable belongings.
By comparability, solely cash-rich tech corporations appear to have the monetary firepower to proceed financing heavy losses with little regard to reaching profitability, a luxurious that legacy media corporations can in poor health afford. Apple, for instance, has reportedly been prepared to fund its streaming ambitions to the tune of $1 billion in losses on common per 12 months.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
