Actors dedicating a considerable part of their career, 5 seasons of Star Wars: Andor for Diego Luna to be specific, can be a huge gamble. The stakes are high since it cannot be predicted if a show will be successful or not. Diego Luna is one of those many actors who decided to not take up that commitment for the upcoming Star Wars: Andor.
The actor is currently on track to star in two seasons for the Star Wars: Rogue One prequel named Star Wars: Andor. The Y tu mamá también star will be starring in the lead role of Cassian Andor, a pilot, and officer of the Rebel Alliance. But he didn’t want to devote five long seasons to it
Diego Luna’s Straight No To Five Seasons Of Star Wars: Andor
Star Wars: Andor is a new TV series by Lucasfilm that will be revolving around five years in the life of the thief-turned-intelligence officer cum pilot Cassian Andor. It will follow the timeline in Star Wars history when the Rebel Alliance was building up its resistance to the Galactic Empire.
It’s exciting to be able to have a peek into Cassian’s life before the events of Rogue One, and the TV series was originally intended to be five seasons long that captures those five years in Cassian’s life before he and his Rogue One team planned to steal the galactic superweapon of the Empire called the Death Star.
However, Diego Luna was reluctant to do five seasons of Andor. This was a story that was recently revealed by Denise Gough, Luna’s co-star in the upcoming series.
During an interview for On The Red Carpet, the actress, who stars in the role of high-ranking Imperial officer Dedra Meero in Andor, said-
“We sort of signed up for five years. We thought they were gonna be five seasons of this and then thankfully Diego [Luna] was like, ‘I’ll die if I do five seasons.’ So they condensed it into this amazing– I don’t know how he’s done it, but he has condensed… Tony Gilroy has managed to do one more season and you’re gonna have told the whole story.”
Five seasons for a prequel TV series is massive. It’s completely fine that Andor is only going to be for two seasons, which is a lot better because showrunner Tony Gilroy will still be showing us those five years in Cassian’s life.
Tony Gilroy Is Relieved To Have 12 Episodes Per Season For Star Wars: Andor
Cramming an originally planned five seasons for a TV series into two seasons does not sound easy at all, and it’s especially hard to do so with a franchise like Star Wars where showrunners have tons of lore to work with that they might want to include in the project.
Tony Gilroy had the benefit of getting 12 episodes for both seasons of Andor, though. During his interview for Star Wars: Andor in On The Red Carpet, the director of Michael Clayton talked about the length of each season-
“There’s a new dial on everybody’s console, which is, ‘How long should my story be? Is it three episodes? Is it seven? Is it twelve? Is it– what is it?’ You gotta pick the right number.”
Gilroy feels liberated about getting those extra episodes to cover ground-
“It’s really fantastic to be able to stretch out to have just have a Dickensian amount of characters that interact and tell a massive story. You don’t wanna waste time, you wanna keep… your compression skills but… it’s very liberating.”
The 66-year-old director previously worked on the already released sequel to Andor with Rogue One, for which he wrote the screenplay alongside Chris Weitz. This should be reason enough to be excited for the upcoming TV series since he’s already qualified and well-versed in the Star Wars franchise.
Star Wars: Andor is scheduled for September 21 release this year on Disney+.
Source: The Direct
