Star Wars: Andor Showrunner on the Other Rogue One Characters Worthy of Prequels

By Patrick Cavanaugh

With Star Wars: Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy having worked extensively on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the filmmaker was quite invested in the journey of many of that film's characters, with Gilroy recently recalling how he could also see Felicity Jones' Jyn Erso or Riz Ahmed's Bodhi Rook being complex enough characters to earn their own prequel series. Given how long the development process has been for Andor to be released, we likely shouldn't expect to see any such projects be developed focusing on either character, with Gilroy's comments largely reflecting how rich those characters' journeys were before what we saw in Rogue One. New episodes of Star Wars: Andor debut on Disney+ on Wednesdays.

When asked by The Hollywood Reporter if Diego Luna's Cassian Andor would have been his go-to pick for a prequel series, Gilroy detailed, "I guess the Jyn Erso show would be pretty fascinating, too. My attitude is you could do anybody. I mean, the Bodhi Rook domestic drama ... Everything can be interesting if you get into it. If you dig down, it's all interesting. Whose life isn't, really? Cassian's life is just a little bit juicier because he's going to end up on that beach and he's going to give it all away, consciously."

In addition to Gilroy having been a writer on Rogue One, he pitched to Lucasfilm what a prequel series could be, which was initially rejected. As time went by, Lucasfilm ended up reconsidering Gilroy's pitch and the project ended up exploring different avenues and became the series it is today.

"But along the way, [Lucasfilm president] Kathy [Kennedy] sent me one of the pilots that they were thinking about, but had grown cool on, and she asked what I thought," Gilroy shared with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. "And in some sort of ... I don't know. I had time. I was in some sort of manic thing, and so I just got on it for a couple days. So I wrote this big manifesto for her. 'This is what your show should be like. This is what you should never do. This is why this doesn't work.' So it was a crazy thing, and it was wildly ambitious. And they were like, 'Well, that's really great. Thanks for helping us know what's wrong, but we could never do this.' Then they tried a couple other things, and when everything had gone cold, there was a moment where, my God, streaming was, whoa. Now we can really do it."

Gilroy added, "So they went back and pulled this old memo, and they were like, 'We want to do this now.' They wanted to be that ambitious on this scale, and the timing was right for me. I had a bunch of other things fall apart. I was getting a little tired of things falling apart, and the one thing that they definitely have is an audience. So it wasn't an overnight thing that you tiptoe into. It takes a long time. Everybody tiptoes forward, but that's how it came to be."

Season 1 of Star Wars: Andor has two remaining episodes.

Would you like to see a series focusing on Jyn or Bodhi? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

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