You're quite right that the story of the people in that ship and life on the run really could set up a good fic series.
Regarding Cassian's backstory, I think we still don't know enough about Cassian's life before the beginning of Andor to assume that he wasn't involved in some rebellious activity (given what Maarva did which we actually saw). So it probably comes down to how the Rebellion is defined. I mean, just his age alone would mean he couldn't have grown up in it unless we count it as happening within years of the Empire's establishment.
Edit: Realized I posted this before I commented about Iger. I agree that the blame rests at least partially with him and the timeline for the film, but also with the decisions of who to hire to develop the new films. I get why they did it, given the amount of money they'd just sunk into Lucasfilm, only a new film series could start to recoup those costs -- and any new content was going to take a while to develop.
But I do regret that storytelling was not the primary thought for most of the films. While the TV shows may have been uneven, overall they've been better than the movies. Yet had it not been for the disappointment in film returns and issues they were having in who they were handing the movies over to (see the mess on Solo), we might not have gotten the TV development as soon as we did.
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Regarding Cassian's backstory, I think we still don't know enough about Cassian's life before the beginning of Andor to assume that he wasn't involved in some rebellious activity (given what Maarva did which we actually saw). So it probably comes down to how the Rebellion is defined. I mean, just his age alone would mean he couldn't have grown up in it unless we count it as happening within years of the Empire's establishment.
Edit: Realized I posted this before I commented about Iger. I agree that the blame rests at least partially with him and the timeline for the film, but also with the decisions of who to hire to develop the new films. I get why they did it, given the amount of money they'd just sunk into Lucasfilm, only a new film series could start to recoup those costs -- and any new content was going to take a while to develop.
But I do regret that storytelling was not the primary thought for most of the films. While the TV shows may have been uneven, overall they've been better than the movies. Yet had it not been for the disappointment in film returns and issues they were having in who they were handing the movies over to (see the mess on Solo), we might not have gotten the TV development as soon as we did.