Rogue One: A Star Wars Story underwent significant changes during reshoots, but Ben Mendelsohn's Director Orson Krennic was always going to be front and centre as the movie's villain.
Yes, we lost a scene which saw him try to take Jyn Erso down while piloting a TIE Fighter, but as one of the Death Star's main architects, he was quickly established as an incredibly important part of the wider Star Wars Galaxy. Like the rest of the movie's leads, Krennic was killed by the Empire on Scarif when they unleashed the space station's destructive capabilities, a fitting and ironic end for the Imperial.
Mendelsohn surprised fans by lending his voice to Krennic in an episode of The Bad Batch season 2 on Disney+ and speculation continues to run rampant that he might make a physical appearance in Andor's upcoming second and final season. Not so, according to the actor himself.
"I think Krennic has a tremendous amount of things left to give to the audience," he told BadTaste.it. "As for being contacted by Lucasfilm for a new project, I can tell you that no, I have not been approached for something like this. And yes, it would be great to see him again somewhere, but for now everything stops here."
"But as far as I'm concerned, I would be very willing to explore it further and significantly in that world."
This echoes comments Mendelsohn told us last April when we asked about his future in this Galaxy Far, Far Away. However, he sounded a little cagier at the time! "Andor 2? Krennic? I don’t think so. I don’t know. If they ask me, I’d pick up. I’d certainly do it, yeah."
Andor's next batch of episodes will chronicle the next steps in Cassian's journey as he fights to assemble a fledgling resistance. Kathleen Kennedy, Tony Gilroy, Sanne Wohlenberg, Diego Luna and Luke Hull are executive producing the upcoming season, which stars Luna, Adria Arjona, Kyle Soller, Denise Gough, Genevieve O’Reilly, Andy Serkis, Muhannad Bahair and Joplin Sibtain.
The plan had been for the show to premiere on Disney+ this August. Instead, we no don't expect to see it back on the streaming platform until early next year due to delays caused by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
A few days ago, Luna confirmed he's now wrapped work on Andor's second batch of episodes.