Disney Reveals $645 Million Spending On Star Wars Show ‘Andor’

Disney has revealed that the cost of making Star Wars streaming show Andor has surged to $645 million (£504.8 million) after it spent a record $290.9 million (£232.1 million) last year on filming its second season which will debut in April 2025.

It is the highest-ever annual spending on a Star Wars production disclosed in Disney’s public filings. The staggering sum eclipses the $280.7 million (£211.8 million) spent on Star Wars: The Last Jedi over the almost 11 month period to March 16, 2019. Likewise, it is higher than the $243.8 million (£193.6 million) cost of The Force Awakens, Disney’s debut entry in the sci-fi saga, during the year-ending November 15, 2016.

Remarkably, the cost of Andor’s second season is set to soar even higher as the $290.9 million was spent during the year to November 22, 2023 which doesn’t even cover all of the shoot. Filming began in November 2022 but was suspended in summer 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. It resumed in January this year and wrapped the following month though this was far from the end of the story.

Principal photography was followed by a year of post-production when many of the show’s lavish effects were added to the footage. Andor stars Mexican actor Diego Luna as the eponymous spy who works for the heroic Rebels as they try to take on the might of the Empire, led by legendary villain Darth Vader.

Andor is set five years before the tremendously-successful original Star Wars trilogy and feels equally grounded thanks to its heavy use of practical effects and physical sets which helps to explain its blockbuster cost. It raises the stakes for Disney which is throwing its weight behind Andor after a string of other Star Wars spinoffs failed to enchant fans as this report explains.

In contrast, Andor’s first season was a force to be reckoned with. Its audience score of 87% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is higher than any of the other Star Wars shows on the Disney+ streaming platform which explains why a second season was given the green light. Indeed, its score is even higher than any of Disney’s Star Wars movies with the exception of 2016’s spinoff film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which also starred Luna. Andor’s success came at quite a cost.

The budgets of streaming shows made in the United States are usually a closely-guarded secret as studios combine the amount spent on all of their productions in their overall expenses and don’t itemize them separately in their filings.

Disney doesn’t discuss the costs of individual productions and did not respond to a request for comment. It doesn’t need to as the data about the cost of its Star Wars shows and movies comes straight from its financial statements.

Productions filmed in the United Kingdom are subject to a far higher level of financial disclosure than their counterparts in the U.S. and there is good reason for this.

The leading Hollywood studios shoot in the U.K. because its government reimburses up to 25.5% of the money they spend on filming there. To qualify for the reimbursement, shows must pass a points test based on factors such as how many members of the production team are from the U.K. and how much of the post-production work is done there. Furthermore, at least 10% of the core costs of the production needs to relate to activities in the U.K. and in order to demonstrate this to the government, studios set up a separate high-end Television Production Company (TPC) for each picture they make there.

The terms of the reimbursement state that each TPC must be “responsible for pre-production, principal photography and post-production of the television production; and for delivery of the completed programme.” Studios aren’t allowed to hide costs in other companies as the terms also state that “there can only be one TPC in relation to a programme.”

The funding mechanism differs slightly from show to show but generally they all follow a similar model which begins at the very start of production.

A Hollywood studio buys a script from a screenwriter and green lights a show about it. If the studio decides to make the show in the U.K. it then sets up a subsidiary company there which acquires the script from its U.S. parent.

Acquiring the script gives the U.K. company the rights to the make a show about it and the Hollywood studio usually pays it a small production services fee. As per the rules, the U.K. company must be responsible for everything from pre-production and principal photography to post-production, delivery of the finished show and payment of goods and services in relation to it. Then comes some financial sorcery.

If the U.K. company makes a profit, the financial benefit from the government comes in the form of a reduction to its tax bill. However, if it makes a loss, it receives a cash reimbursement so studios fund the companies in a way which engineers this.

As shown in the diagram below, the studio buys the rights to the show from the U.K. company but only gives it approximately 74.5% of the projected production cost. The remaining 25.5% is provided by the studio in the form of a loan. The loan and the revenue from the sale of the rights gives the U.K. company 100% of the production budget for the show and this sets the scene for the cash reimbursement.

Loans are not counted as revenue because they need to be repaid so the U.K. company makes a loss equivalent to around 25.5% of the show’s budget. That is when the U.K. government steps in as it reimburses this loss. As the amount of the reimbursement is equivalent to the loan that the company owes its parent, the cash can be passed to the Hollywood studio as repayment. Thanks to these twists and turns, the U.K. government covers 25.5% of a show’s costs, thereby reducing the studio’s net spending. It takes some detective work to get to the bottom of it.

The U.K. companies usually have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when filing permits to film on location. Tallying the company names with the productions they are responsible for requires deep industry knowledge which my colleague and I have built up over nearly 15 years. We are the only reporters worldwide who specialize in covering the financial statements of U.K. production companies for national media and we have reported on them for more than 10 leading titles including The Times of London, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and the London Evening Standard.

The production companies have to file annual financial statements and they have a national interest in the U.K. media as the reimbursement to the studios comes from taxpayers’ money. The financial statements lift the curtain on the costs of streaming shows as they don’t just reveal the reimbursement but also the total spending, the headcount, salaries and even the social security payments for staff.

Marketing costs are not shown in the financial statements, as they tend to be covered directly by the studio. Likewise, revenue from streaming subscriptions and merchandise also goes directly to the studio.

The financial statements are just for the company which makes the show and, in the case of Andor, that’s Disney’s subsidiary E&E Industries (UK). It was originally founded in October 2018 to produce a film about beloved Star Wars character Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Disney had a rethink following the failure of Solo, another Star Wars movie based on a classic character. As this report revealed, Solo lost more than $90 million at the box office so Obi-Wan Kenobi was turned into a streaming series. Filming was due to begin in summer 2020 but it was not to be.

Production was put on hold in mid-January 2020 after Disney reportedly became concerned that the storyline was too similar to the premise of another Star Wars streaming series, The Mandalorian.

The delay proved to be a blessing in disguise as the pandemic soon sent the world into lockdown giving time for the Obi-Wan Kenobi show to be reworked. By May 2021 the crew had gathered in Los Angeles and filming for it finally began there.

The filings for E&E Industries (UK) reveal that a total of $7.2 million (£5.6 million) had been spent by October 31, 2019, not long before pre-production on Obi-Wan Kenobi was halted. It is likely that more was spent on the show in the intervening time but the bulk of the cost should show on the October 31 filings.

E&E Industries (UK) wasn’t mothballed when Obi-Wan Kenobi was put on hold. Instead, it became the production company for Andor which was shot at the historic Pinewood studious outside London and on location across the U.K. A futuristic metro station in London doubled for the Imperial Security Bureau on the alien planet of Coruscant whilst the resort planet Niamos was actually a seaside town in the north of England.

In an interview with ComicBookMovie.com, Andor’s special effects supervisor Neal Scanlan revealed that around six weeks of pre-production had been done on Andor by the time that the U.K. went into lockdown at the end of March 2020.

Filming was delayed repeatedly due to the pandemic leading to E&E Industries (UK) banking a $1.6 million (£1.2 million) government grant along with $2 million (£1.5 million) from an insurance claim.

Filming finally ended in late September 2021 and by late November, a total of $271.6 million (£202.9 million) had been spent on Andor’s first season, including the $7.2 million of expenses on Obi-Wan Kenobi. Over the following year a further $82.5 million (£69.8 million) was spent on Andor, and it is believed that this was largely dedicated to post-production as the show premiered in September 2022. However, pre-production on series two also accounted for some of this spending as it began filming in November 2022. Disney spent $290.9 million on it over the course of the following year but it doesn’t stop there.

The filings reveal that the show also received a massive $129.3 million (£101.2 million) reimbursement in return for filming in the U.K. This brings Andor’s spending so far down to $515.7 million and the financial statements confirm that “the final cost was forecasted to be within the production budget.”

The final stages of filming followed by post-production should increase the cost somewhat but it seems unlikely that it will rise much further. That’s because the recently-released synopsis for season two describes it as Andor’s “long-awaited conclusion.” With so much money on the line Disney will be hoping that it goes out with a bang.