Before creator Tony Gilroy got involved and turned Andor into a thrillingly rich, thematically nuanced masterpiece, the Star Wars show was initially in the hands of Disney animation boss Jared Bush, and a new art book has revealed the Zootopia director's original take on the material.
As spotted by Cinelinx, new coffee table book The Art of Star Wars: Andor contains Bush's original pitch for the Star Wars show, taken from his 2018 series bible, and it reveals a radically different version of Andor that never was.
“The fledgling Rebellion experiences a crippling setback when an Imperial mole hidden within its ranks decimates a series of rebel bases. Cassian Andor, a young intelligence operative, is one of the few who survive, only to be falsely accused of being the mole himself. Out in the cold, Cassian discovers the only way to clear his name and find the mole is to infiltrate an Imperial planet which holds the key to uncovering the mole's identity.”
While this concept for the show retains the core idea of Andor being an espionage-powered story set in a galaxy far, far away, Bush's Andor would have been very different from the two-season show we got under Gilroy's stewardship. Instead of a simple mole hunt, Gilroy shaped Andor into a show about political oppression and resistance that mirrored real-world events to an almost eerie degree.
Andor was originally revealed in November 2018 after roughly a year of development. Initially, The Americans' executive producer Stephen Schiff was brought on board as showrunner, after Bush contributed a pilot script and series bible. Gilroy, who reportedly oversaw Rogue One's extensive reshoots, later shared his own vision for Andor with Kathleen Kennedy by penning a letter to the former head of Lucasfilm. Kennedy was evidently impressed, as Gilroy officially came on board in 2019.
The two-season show ran from 2022 to 2025 and is widely considered one of the high points of the Disney era of Star Wars. We even named Andor season 2 the best show of 2025. Gilroy provided some insights into the beloved show in our season 2 post-mortem, and even dispelled a fan theory around one of the finale's most ambiguous moments.
As for Bush, Andor may have slipped through his fingers, but the filmmaker had a pretty good 2025 too – he was the director of the highest-grossing Hollywood movie of the year, Zootopia 2, after becoming the chief creative officer of Disney Animation in late 2024.
Andor is streaming in full on Disney Plus. For more, check out our list of the best Disney Plus shows, or look ahead with our guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies and shows.
