The release of the first season of Andor last year was a huge critical success and many fans and critics have deemed it as one of the best Star Wars projects in the franchise's history due to its gritty and grounded take that we've never seen before.
Fortunately, a second and final season is now on its way with production still ongoing ahead of its planned release next year. There is a lot of hope that the ending will be able to stick the landing and successfully tie into the events of Rogue One.
One of the elements in the series that is receiving praise is its production values since a lot of them were shot on-location and didn't rely on the Volume technology, unlike the other Star Wars live-action shows.
Now, as we're learning more details about the making of the series, we finally know now how much they spent on the production of the first season and it's probably bigger than you might expect.
The Budget for Andor Season 1 Has Been Revealed
A recent report from The Hollywood Reporter regarding the making of the series revealed that the first season of Andor had a budget of an estimated $250 million. If the calculations are correct, it means that each episode had a budget of $20-21 million.
Considering its massive production values, longer episode lengths, and the mixture of practical and special effects, it's not surprising to hear the show's steep cost and it puts it on the same level as most tentpole films nowadays.
Showrunner Tony Gilroy believed that the series came at a perfect time as he thinks that it would have never been given a green light earlier or wouldn't be ordered today.
"We got lucky making this during the gold rush a few years ago. A lot of people now have cold feet, and you can’t do this show inexpensively," he told the outlet.
"I’m just so relieved at the reaction because we were making this huge, obscure thing and we knew it was crazy. Like, ‘Is this too much? Have we gone too far?’ There were no focus groups or test audiences. Now it will be good if we can stick the landing and go out strong."
As we've seen on the overall results of the first season, there is no doubt at this point that the money was well spent as the production values were really impressive and you can tell that Gilroy and his team really worked hard on making sure that it will live up to its quality.
Whether the massive budget resulted in a decent return on investment is another conversation, but nevertheless, the show had enough success to say that making it was all worth it.
Also Read: Andor: Diego Luna Reveals How Star Wars Changed His Life
The first season of Andor is available to stream on Disney+. You can check more details about it here.
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