Despite a steep second-weekend decline at the domestic box office, The Mandalorian & Grogu has already managed to outperform Marvel Studios' biggest flop. The latest Star Wars film suffered a 70% drop in its second weekend and is widely viewed now as a box office letdown for Lucasfilm. While much of the current pop culture conversation has shifted toward breakout low-budget horror hits Obsession and Backrooms, the movie has still generated enough to overtake Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios' greatest theatrical failure.
Let's start with the bad for The Mandalorian & Grogu. After already being projected to underperform, the new film starring Pedro Pascal even came in below some of those expectations. It failed to reach $100 million during the four-day Memorial Day opening weekend, a benchmark that even Solo: A Star Wars Story managed to surpass during the same holiday frame eight years ago.
To date, The Mandalorian & Grogu has earned just over $139 million domestically. For the first time in Star Wars' 49-year live-action theatrical history, a film from the franchise could finish its run without reaching $200 million at the domestic box office.
That's a sobering reality for Lucasfilm and Disney after spending the last seven years building out the franchise on Disney+, only to return to theaters and potentially set all the wrong records.
From a global perspective, The Mandalorian & Grogu is currently tracking toward around $340 million worldwide, which would make it the lowest-grossing film of the Disney-era Star Wars slate. The current low mark belongs to Solo, which earned $392.9 million globally in 2018.
All of that being said, The Mandalorian & Grogu has already cleared one unfortunate milestone: it has surpassed 2023's The Marvels, easily the least successful MCU film ever released.
So when Star Wars hits a rough patch, Lucasfilm can at least take some comfort in knowing it hasn't fallen quite as far as Marvel Studios did at its lowest point.
The Marvels finished its domestic run with just $84 million, making it the only MCU movie to earn less than $100 million in North America.
By comparison, The Mandalorian & Grogu crossed that threshold during its opening weekend. While neither film performed to Disney's expectations, The Marvels never really got off the ground despite starring three super heroines that can fly.
The comparison highlights a similar problem facing both franchises. Big-budget sequels and spin-offs tied to powerhouse IPs are supposed to be Disney's safest bets. And often they are.
Just look at Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Zootopia 2, just to name a few blockbusters of the last few years.
Then there are the exceptions. Films like The Marvels and The Mandalorian & Grogu serve as reminders that even the biggest entertainment brands aren't immune to audience disinterest.
When these projects stumble, they can make once-unstoppable franchises feel less like cultural events and more like products that mainstream audiences have decided aren't worth their time.
In the Star Wars Disney era, this has never been the case besides Solo. Episodes 7-9 and Rogue One all earned over $1 billion at the global box office during that run from 2015 to 2019. Much has changed since then in theaters, given the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood strikes, but regardless of such excuses, Star Wars should mean something. And similar to Princess Leia to Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original film, the folks at Lucasfilm have only one hope.
How Star Wars' Box Office Future Looks
Despite what will almost certainly become a forgettable box office run, one that likely won't lead to a direct sequel and will jeopardize Dave Filoni's long-discussed Mando-Verse crossover movie, there is still reason for Star Wars fans to be optimistic about the franchise's theatrical future.
In 2027, audiences have Star Wars: Starfighter to look forward to, a project untethered from the stories that came before it. Set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker, the film stars Ryan Gosling, who is coming off the massive success of Project Hail Mary and could bring some of that commercial momentum to a galaxy far, far away.
Directed by Shawn Levy, Starfighter may not be the boldest exploration of Star Wars lore, but it already feels like a more traditional cinematic event than The Mandalorian & Grogu, which, at the end of the day, was just a spin-off of a Disney+ TV series.
Beyond Starfighter, however, the future becomes much murkier. The New Jedi Order film starring Daisy Ridley continues to cycle through writers and appears stuck in development limbo.
Meanwhile, no other Star Wars movie is particularly close to entering production. Perhaps Simon Kinberg's trilogy will be fast-tracked, but for now, Star Wars finds itself in a strange transitional period, attempting to shift its focus back to theaters after years of streaming, without a clear vision.
