Rogue One's Tony Gilroy is taking over as showrunner on Disney+'s Cassian Andor show
Aux Features TV
Among the various Star Wars TV projects Disney has floated over the last few years, few have had more potential than the (as-yet-untitled) one centered on Rogue One’s Cassian Andor. Played by Diego Luna in Gareth Edward’s 2016 trip to the darker, grittier side of the Star Wars universe, Andor is a moral question mark in a world often depicted as almost literally black and white, a heroic but ruthless killer willing to do pretty much anything for the cause of the Rebellion. Dipping into his backstory—because, as viewers of Rogue One will know, his frontstory doesn’t have a whole lot left to tell—is a very cool idea, especially when you can add in his relationship with re-programmed Imperial droid K-2SO, memorably voiced by Alan Tudyk in the 2016 film.
Now THR reports that developments on the series are still moving forward, despite the current shutdown—including news that Tony Gilroy, who co-wrote Rogue One, will take over showrunner duties on the series. He’ll be replacing Stephen Schiff, recently of The Americans, in the role.
THR also notes two new staffing additions to the series, with Genevieve O’Reilly and Denise Gough both signing on to co-star. O’Reilly will reprise her role as Rebellion general Mon Mothma, while Gough’s role is, as yet, unknown. They join a cast that includes Stellan Skarsgard and Kyle Soller, for a series set 5 years before Rogue One, at the height of the Empire’s power. (At least, its non-Death-Star-based powers anyway.) There’s no word yet when the series will go into production, but it’ll land on Disney+ when its time finally comes around.
22 Comments
Oh, right. I forgot about this show.
Disney making last-second replacements on Star Wars projects has like a 50/50 hit rate at this point, so…here’s hoping for the best.(Imagine letting somebody simply have at it with the property at this point and just…dealing with only recouping the investment, or maybe making a slight profit.)
Everything about this sounds good and I would like to see it right now please.
It begs to be mentioned that this is also what he did on Rogue One. He took over production, albeit much later in the schedule than this, and turned out what in my opinion is the best of the Disney Era Star Wars movies.
He’s the smartest choice to lead this series by far. He went from being an uncredited writer on Rogue One to basically saving its ass in reshoots and post-production to leading a spin-off series. Well done. He’s a main reason I’m so interested in it.
It is weird talking about the Disney Star Wars movies.
I’ve enjoyed parts of all of them, and I may have had the most fun with Solo. But that said, I think Rogue One was the best made out of all of them.
Any Solo lover is a friend of mine.
Damning with faint praise, but yes.
I always though TFW would be my favorite of the Disneys, but hands down it’s RO. Cannot say how many times I watched it when it was on Netflix. I would still be on the edge of my seat, couch, bed, wherever, with every scene.And I’m not gonna lie, I did always playback the final scene. But the trip getting there was great storytelling. Good characters, good story, good background, and the settings were not a repeat of EVERY SINGLE PLANET EVER. In the age of the prequels and sequels, I’ll hold Rogue One as the best Star War.
As far as fan-service geek-moments go, old footage of Red and Gold leader being used in the battle over Scarif beats ‘The garbage will do’ by a mile. I’m not saying the Falcon’s reveal in TFA wasn’t cool, but when those x-wings dropped out of hyperspace and we saw Red Leader in the cockpit, I may have peed myself a little bit.
I’ve been trying to sort out a ranking of the sequel trilogy in my head and it’s… not easy. But expand the list to all five of the Disney-era films and Rogue One is definitely at the top, full stop, no questions asked.Ok, fine, here’s my list, just the trilogy:TLJTROSTFAThe problem is it turns into more of which film is least flawed, and that can vary on any given viewing. (I’m not griping, I’ve really enjoyed the sequels.)And don’t even ask about Solo; it could be #2, it could be #200.
What I find interesting is that timeline-wise, this show takes place at the same time as Rebels. And given that we’ve got Rosario Dawson tapped to play Ahsoka Tano in the next season of Mandalorian (and, I’ve heard, possible flashbacks in the Obi-Wan series), I wonder if we’re going to be seeing her turning up on this show as well. I’d have to dig it up, but somewhere on the Star Wars website it’s come up that Cassian winds up inheriting the ‘Fulcrum’ code name, so that would be an obvious link there.
Can I laugh at life repeating itself again? Once again I suspect its for the best, Gilroy made something out of a messy project with Rogue One, who’s to say he can’t again.
Has anyone pinned down what the re-shoots added? At the time, Disney higher-ups said they did the re-shoots b/c Edwards’ product didn’t “feel” like Star Wars, which led me to assume that the main things the reshoots did was add Dr. Evazan and Pando Baba in Jedda, and Threepio and Artoo at Yavin base.
I believe he said in an interview in the last year or two that a lot of the heavy lifting he did on the script was for the first hour or so, because that part was in dire shape.If the first act we got is a huge improvement, I can’t imagine what the first version was like (and I say that as someone who loves the movie).
Its still unclear what was changed after all this time. I presume characterization also got heavily changed.
They need to give another movie or series to Gareth Edwards. He made the best of the Disney-era Star Wars films. He also seems to be the only Disney-era director who remembered the name of the franchise and created a masterpiece of outer-space combat.
Rogue One is the best SW movie since ESB. Looking forward to this.
his frontstory doesn’t have a whole lot left to tellYou would have thought the same about Palpatine a couple of years ago. And you would have been right.
The hate inside you is strong. Fret not, Iger will take it all away.
Honestly, Cassian’s frontstory didn’t have a lot to it during the run-time of ‘Rogue One’.
Did Disney ever explain why a CGI Carrie Fisher was off limits but a CGI Peter Cushing that looked like absolute shite was acceptable?