'The Mandalorian & Grogu' Is Tracking Towards a Disaster Opening Weekend
The Mandalorian & Grogu is an interesting Hail Mary for Star Wars. It will be the franchise’s first theatrical release since The Rise of Skywalker, which made buckets of cash, but squandered a whole lot of goodwill in the process. In fairness, COVID came swooping in, so we’ll never really know if Star Wars could’ve clawed its way back into theaters sooner or left Lucasfilm gun-shy for the better part of a decade.
While The Sequel Trilogy farted out, The Mandalorian became a massive hit for Disney+, and set record numbers without the aid of a pandemic trapping everyone at home. People forget that part. It felt like a return-to-form for the franchise and was hailed as the future of Star Wars until became the exact opposite. With the obvious exception of Andor, Disney trotted out streaming series after streaming series with diminishing returns. It’s latest effort, Skeleton Crew, arrived with dismal numbers despite a holiday release and kid-friendly hook. The Mandalorian & Grogu might pull of a similar trick.
According to Deadline, the film is tracking towards an $80 million opening weekend over the Memorial Day holiday, which would put it below the box office for a movie that Lucasfilm probably doesn’t want to see mentioned in this context:
The lowest opening for a Star Wars live-action movie belongs to 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, which debuted to $103M over the four-day Memorial Day holiday and finaled at $213.7M domestic and $392.9M WW, ultimately leading to Lucasfilm scrapping a plan for stand-alone movies about legacy characters. Solo was plagued in advance of its opening with headlines about production problems; filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were fired and replaced by Ron Howard.
That can’t be great, and yet not at all surprising given The Mandalorian Season 3 drove the series into the ground over three years ago. The Baby Yoda iron has not been hot for quite some time, so this is a pretty huge gamble without getting into the creative bankruptcy of it all.
That said, I’m actually going to be bullish on the green little guy. He is a merchandising golden goose, and I can see this movie roping in families with young kids over the holiday weekend and beyond. I might eat some crow here, but put me down for this movie having legs. The $80 million tracking is no doubt relying on presale numbers, and while that’s usually a good predictor, The Mandalorian & Grogu’s audience might be more spur of the moment. Zootopia 2 absolutely cleaned house not too long ago, and I can see some overlap here.
Or Mando and Baby G explode crash and burn right out of the gate. As always, I’m talking out my butt here! Again, this is a show that ran into a wall back in 2023 because it couldn’t have walked away with the pitch-perfect Season 2 ending. There are so many things working against it, and yet, look at that little face trying to be a bounty hunter like his dad. (I’m not crying.) Folks, this could go either way!
