It looks as though Lucasfilm’s upcoming Rogue One prequel series about Rebel Alliance spy Cassian Andor is on track to begin production in the coming months. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, series star Diego Luna confirmed that the series is scheduled to shoot later this year.
Lucasfilm announced the series back in November 2018, revealing that Luna would reprise his role as Cassian Andor, during the formative years of the Rebel Alliance. Last year, Disney confirmed that Alan Tudyk would reprise his role as K-2So in the series. The series would be the second live-action television series for Disney’s streaming service, Disney + after The Mandalorian, which debuted last year to widespread acclaim.
Speaking with ET, Luna said that “we are doing it this year,” and that he’s read some of the scripts for the series. He noted that he was excited for the series, noting that it’s “really cool to tell a story where you already know the ending.
“It is a different approach because of the beauty and it’s how things happen. It’s not just what happens. It’s not the typical way of approaching a story. It’s about how things happen, which in fact, is the same that happened in Rogue One. You know the ending, but you don’t know how it happened, and we have that challenge in front of us again, which is exciting.”
The news is a reassurance that the series is back on track: last year, journalists had begun to hear that the production had been shut down. In October, Lucasfilm brought on Tony Gilroy, the writer and director who had been hired to fix up the original Rogue One production, to direct the pilot and write a couple of episodes for the series. Gilroy’s inclusion was welcome news: he handled Rogue One’s extensive reshoots and reconceptualized the project to better focus on the film’s characters.
Earlier this year, Tudyk spoke about his role in the series, saying that he was looking forward to playing K-2S0 again, “especially after seeing The Mandalorian and seeing what they can do with a series, how much fun it is to just go into smaller stories and tell stories that way.”
The confirmation is further good news for Star Wars fans, who learned last month that Disney was delaying the production of its third live-action series, about Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi due to problems with its scripts. The revelation raised concerns with fans, given some of the issues that Lucasfilm has had with its standalone projects, like Rogue One and Solo. Series star Ewan McGregor confirmed the delay, saying that the series was still happening, but that its production would likely take place in 2021, rather than the summer of 2020.
The Cassian Andor series is slated for a 2021 release on Disney+. Production is currently underway on a second season for The Mandalorian, which is set for an October release.
