Rogue One: A Star Wars Story writer Gary Whitta shared an idea he had for an Imperial-hunting Star Wars series.
Whitta, who came up with the story for Rogue One before Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy came on to pen the script, claimed he and Weitz had an idea for a series "about a Mossad-style Rebel team hunting down Imperial war criminals who fled and disappeared after the fall of the Empire." The series would have been thematically connected to Rogue One, and Whitta thinks it would have been a compelling bookend to the hit Star Wars movie. However, the duo never ended up pursuing the idea.
As the first Star Wars movie not connected to The Skywalker Saga, Rogue One ushered in a new era for the galaxy far, far away and managed to stand out with its drastically different tone. The film was much bleaker than other films in the franchise, and even featured almost all of the main characters dying at the end of the film. Rogue One and now Andor star Diego Luna has stated he was eager to join the Star Wars universe because of the film's confidence in its own story. "I thought it was so bold, so interesting, and so unique to have an ending like this," Luna said. "And I remember people say we shot different endings and, just to be clear, the day I was offered this role, I knew this was it."
As of now, the critically-acclaimed Andor is the only spinoff show to stem from Rogue One and Luna is confident that the film is the reason the series was able to break the traditional Star Wars mold. Andor has been a change of pace for the franchise with it not featuring the Jedi, mentioning the Force, or even showing any lightsabers. "Rogue One had an opportunity to be different, to have a different tone, to be acted by different people that you might not expect to see in the Star Wars universe, it was more violent, darker and we got away with that. Audiences liked it, they liked it a lot, and that’s why we're doing Andor," Luna explained.
Going forward, Rogue One co-writer and Andor creator Gilroy hopes more filmmakers push the boundaries in the Star Wars universe. "As we said before, it's like taking the Latin Mass out of the Roman Catholic Church in a way. Once you do that, it's like, 'Wow, everything changes,'" Gilroy stated. The showrunner went on to claim the best-case scenario for him would be if other filmmakers continued the trend and gave fans versions of Star Wars stories that they are not used to.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and all episodes of Andor Season 1 are available to stream on Disney+.
Source: Twitter