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The numbers are in—or at least initial estimates from the Mouse House—and Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu surpassed expectations this holiday weekend. According to the studio, the latest movie set in the galaxy far, far away took off with an estimated $100 million in the U.S., flying well past its pre-weekend estimates which had landed it somewhere between $80 and $85 million during the four-day timeframe. Even inside the traditional three-day frame, the film still exceeded expectations with an estimated $81 million, which accounts for nearly half of the Mando flick’s $167 million global bow.
On its face alone, those are decent numbers for a Memorial Day release in the 2020s. But the question surely gnawing at longtime Lucasfilm fans and Disney shareholders is: are those numbers good enough for Star Wars? We’d argue yes, with some caveats…
In the modern Disney era of George Lucas’ creation, the opening could be written of as weak at a glance, coming in below what was previously perceived as a major disappointment for the brand, Solo: A Star Wars Story. That 2018 flick opened during the same Memorial Day holiday eight years ago and grossed $103 million across the four days. Also worth noting is it made $84 million across three days, similarly up over Mando despite nearly a decade of inflation.
At the time, those numbers were considered grim enough that Disney went into damage control ahead of the following year’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy struck a tone of reevaluation in the press, suggesting the studio would never recast an iconic classic character again—an irony since Lucasfilm continued developing Obi-Wan Kenobi as a Disney+ series starring not Alec Guinness.
So there’s thus a definite “glass half empty” way of looking at The Mandalorian and Grogu’s opening, which is a far cry from The Force Awakens’ $248 million debut in 2015 or even the much derided Rise of Skywalker in 2019, a movie that bowed at $177 million. Yet by virtue of those increasingly distant-sounding years on the other side of the COVID pandemic, a greater context should be considered.
If you view Mando and Grogu’s cinematic detour as purely the heir of a lofty 50-year legacy, the weight of expectations becomes severe. Conversely, if one takes a coolly spreadsheet-minded survey of the current field for Disney’s bread and butter—largely nostalgia-driven intellectual property, at least in terms of live-action—Mandalorian and Grogu could be considered a step in the right direction.
When counting the fourth day of the weekend, the new Star Wars film opened higher than Disney’s Marvel offering last May, Thunderbolts*, which grossed $74 million during the first weekend of May, a spot that noticeably was occupied by Disney’s The Devil Wears Prada 2 this year (and which also opened above Thunderbolts). It’s also well up from last year’s Memorial Day weekend action release, the ostensibly final Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which debuted at $79 million. The year before saw Warners’ Furiosa have a notoriously bumpy rollout at $32 million.
If reports of Mandalorian and Grogu’s allegedly $165 million budget are to be believed, then the new Star Wars flick already bested its price tag in its first global weekend, albeit with the caveat that theater owners pocket about half of that initial haul. And in a world of diminished movie attendance in a post-pandemic, post-streaming, and frankly post Disney+ world, a holiday debut that just about crosses over into nine figures is not shabby.
When Solo was perceived as a failure, it was during a moment where no other Disney Star Wars movie earned less than $1 billion, and the Marvel machine was cranking out that number once or twice a year. It was also a time when the love for the brand—or more specifically the older films from the 1970s through 2000s—was higher. In other words, it was before market oversaturation that came with a new movie every year for five years straight, followed by a glut of arguably too many Disney+ streaming shows.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is directly derived from the biggest hits of that strategic pivot to streaming. So the movie might represent a new chapter for Star Wars at the studio, but it is also the culmination of a strategy that its new owners have been building to for a decade. Indeed, the goal since 2012 has been to always make Star Wars a brand that exists in perpetuity like Marvel Comics characters, DC, Star Trek, and a small collection of lucrative others. The downside was that Star Wars could (and we’d argue has) lost its specialness as a piece of film and pop culture history. It no longer represents a specific moment in its medium, industry, or fans’ lives, but is rather a product designed to appeal to all generations—and specifically the next generation(s) who need to replenish the customer base.
It is likely not a coincidence Lucasfilm recently revealed The Mandalorian is the most popular streaming Star Wars show with the children of today, aka Gen Alpha. For them, it’s as much or more Star Wars than the original trilogy their grandparents watch, and a movie that replicates that (if even to a detrimental effect, as I argued in my review) is not inherently a bad thing. It’s what Disney wants: Star Wars for the next generation.
The film is obviously not reaching the heights of the original trilogy, creatively or culturally, or even the financial whirlwind or the 2010s sequel trilogy. But as with Star Trek and other managed brands, it could find an “equilibrium” of young fans and older diehards who will turn up every year. That strategy inevitably creates a ceiling or “roof” on financial expectations, but it can go on in perpetuity. Which is the whole point.
We don’t know what Disney internally views as their own metric for success, but The Mandalorian and Grogu has an “A-” CinemaScore. That suggests the target demographics liked what they saw and thus might be back for more. If that’s the goal—as well as the accompanying merchandise, brand partnerships, and theme park experience opportunities—then this is the way for Star Wars going forward.
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