Posted on 06/07/2025 11:07:42 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Speaking at the ATX Television Festival, the creator discussed how much freedom he had to acknowledge "grown-up" topics in his "Star Wars" story: "I've been allowed to start using the word 'fascism' the last couple weeks. That's liberating." ...
"I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million," he said. "For 24 episodes, I never took a note. We said '[redacted] the Empire' in the first season, and they said, 'Can you please not do that?' ... In Season 2, they said, 'Streaming is dead, we don't have the money we had before,' so we fought hard about money, but they never cleaned anything up. That [freedom] comes with responsibilities."
"But it is sad how many people can find a place to put 'genocide' into their vocabulary," he said. "I don't think you need me to say anything else, do you?"
From there, Willimon said it was "heartwarming to hear how many people are inspired" by the scene.
"Rebellions are built on hope, right?," he said. "And hope is a hard-won thing. You don't wake up in the morning with a bucket full of hope. You have to earn it."
(Excerpt) Read more at indiewire.com ...
Disney Says Streaming is Dead & That It Doesn't Have The Money It Once Did For Shows According to "Andor" Creator | Luke Bouma | Cord Cutters News | June 5, 2025In a stunning revelation at the ATX Television Festival, "Andor" creator Tony Gilroy disclosed that Disney, the entertainment giant behind the Star Wars franchise, admitted to severe financial constraints during the production of the critically acclaimed series' second season. According to Gilroy, Disney informed him that "streaming is dead" and that the company no longer has the financial resources it once did, marking a significant shift in the industry's landscape. The 24-episode "Star Wars" prequel to "Rogue One," which wrapped its run in April 2025, reportedly cost a staggering $650 million to produce, a figure Gilroy shared during a Q&A session reported by IndieWire.
I am not sure it is dying, however the new stuff isn’t worth watching, What I have done is watch all of the library of decent shows on each streamer that I like, IE BritBox, Acorn and the like... and then cancel. Cancelled Netflix a while back. I am buying DVDs and watching less. I am wishing that the Turner Classic Movies would stream. I would sign up in a heartbeat.
Tried the library however their DVDs are in poor shape.
Just bought the Mad Men series. and a number of Eastwoods
Next will buy John Wayne.
I wish there was a dvd rental or buying service. It makes sense. The catalog of films is huge. Tastes vary. No streamer can manage it all.
Thought I’d share this. If you have Amazon prime or Fire TV you can simply add & remove other streaming channels with little effort. For example, parents wanted BritBox so I added that channel for a few months until they were done then I added History channel for a while then replaced that with Apple TV. The best aspect for me is the ease of adding and removing channels / streams without needing separate platform subscription accounts. It just all goes through Amazon.
Streaming services actually make sense in the abstract. You pay and you get access to every movie or show in their catalog.
In reality they do not allow you access to everything and they keep messing with what you can see. Movies are clipped, re-dubbed and otherwise sanitized "for your protection" And they can just vanish. Like the movie "Togo" did. Oh, you thought you bought it? Nope. We will just reach into your system and remove it. Because you only bought access to it until we decide to remove that access.
Andor is a great show - Star Wars for adults.
We do similar. We also have Prime and ROKU. We add and delete streaming services to attain variety.
I must note that we do not watch ROKU channels, just their premium ad free add-ons. We strongly dislike many streamed ads due to their content. We’ve also noticed a 42 minute TV show will have 20 - 30 minutes of ads cutting into the program. Conventional TV, such as CBS or NBC, have only 18 minutes worth of adds per hour.
Back to the thread’s article. Streaming is not dead. Disney is. The tired saying “go woke go broke” applies.
“Movies are clipped, re-dubbed and otherwise sanitized”
No kidding. Classic Reel made it a point to randomly cut most westerns. They clip out huge chunks causing the movie to skip from one scene to a totally different scene which destroys the story continuity.
Another pet peeve is low frame rates when classics are digitized. During fast action the figures in the movie are jerky, which makes it difficult to watch.
Andor and Rogue One are BY A MILE the best Star Wars stuff that has come out since the original series ended in the 1980s. Andor in particular was really good - totally unlike the woke crap Disney had made previously.
I HOPE this will serve as an inspiration. It is distinctly possible to make really good content in the whole Star Wars universe. It doesn’t all have to be aimed at kids either.
The only streaming service I carry is Amazon Prime, mostly due to low price and free shipping (most of the time). Like you, I prefer to have the disks around. OTOH, when the bluray player upstairs croaked out, I started to move all the disks down here, instead of replacing the player right away. In the winter, this leads to my buying seasons of stuff on Amazon Prime using my remote control so I’m not stuck with whatever free stuff I can find already on there, or Tubi, or YouTube, or Plex or Pluto etc.
~$20-25 million per episode. A lavish budget for an independent film project—per episode. I’ve yet to see an episode. Folks say it’s good. Is it _that_ good?
Netflix got its start by renting out DVDs.
I dunno, I’ve never seen it. This was largely about the oversupply of “content” having resulted in profits vanishing, and with a little focus on the clearly leftist scripts. :^)
I know. It should go back to it. It just recently stopped.
Andor really felt more like a Magnificent Seven/Dirty Dozen type of movie, although that overlooks the really good political/subterfuge aspects. And just really good acting. I liked that actor a lot in Rogue One, too. He acted much more like how a real combat veteran acts.
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