It’s The End Of An Era For The Mandalorian After Making $344 Million


Star Wars was meant to have a grand return to the big screen in 2026 after seven years away with The Mandalorian and Grogu. Continuing Lucasfilm’s hit Disney+ live-action series seemed like a no-brainer given the admiration for Din Djarin and Grogu years ago, but the movie failed to convince audiences (and critics) that this adventure was anything more than a few episodes of the series stitched together for a feature length.

Following its mixed reception, The Mandalorian and Grogu struggled to really find its footing in theaters. It had a franchise-low opening weekend at $81 million domestically. The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s box office then suffered a huge second weekend drop, hindering its legs and making even Lucasfilm’s somewhat modest $165 million investment in the production become a huge risk.

The movie is on track to finish as the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars movie, coming in under Solo: A Star Wars Story‘s $392.9 million. The Mandalorian and Grogu is still about $50 million shy of that total after nine weeks in theaters, leaving it with a worldwide gross of $344.8 million. The underwhelming response has now led to it ending an era.

The Mandalorian and Grogu is no longer one of 2026’s top 10 highest-grossing movies at the box office. It spent the majority of its first eight weeks in that top 10 chart, but it has now been surpassed by Minions & Monsters (with The Odyssey hot on its heels, too). The result is not at all what Lucasfilm was hoping for, but it is not surprising given the film’s reception.

The Mandalorian & Grogu Falling Out Of The Top 10 Box Office Was Inevitable

Mando at a bar with Grogu on his shoulder in The Mandalorian and Grogu
Credit: Nicola Goode / © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

The fact of the matter is The Mandalorian and Grogu never performed strong enough to have a chance of staying in the top 10 box office chart for the entire year. A global finish lower than Solo was never going to cut it, especially when it is poised to wrap up its theatrical run with around $350 million.

You have to go back to 2003 (excluding 2020 for the pandemic) to find an example of a movie finishing in the worldwide top 10 box office chart with a lower gross than The Mandalorian and Grogu, when Bad Boys II finished 10th with $273.3 million.

















A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away · Eight Questions
How Well Do You Know Star Wars?
“The Force will be with you. Always.”

🗡️Jedi OrderLight-side guardians

The SithRule of two

⚙️The RebellionA new hope

🪓Bounty HuntersThis is the way

👑The EmpireOrder 66

01

The original Star Wars film — later retitled Episode IV: A New Hope — opened in just 32 American theatres and proceeded to become the highest-grossing film of its era, redefining what summer blockbusters could be. In which year did it premiere?




✓ Correct! 1977 — specifically May 25. 20th Century Fox had so little faith in the project they only opened it in 32 theatres at first; queues quickly stretched around the block, and the film expanded to over 1,000 screens within months. It earned $307 million in its initial domestic run, won six Academy Awards (with another four nominations) and inverted Hollywood’s economics for the next 50 years.

✗ Wrong. The answer is 1977. 1975 is when the script was being shopped around. 1979 is when Star Trek: The Motion Picture released as a Star Wars-shaped countermove. 1980 is The Empire Strikes Back. The original Star Wars is May 25, 1977.

02

A New Hope’s writer-director was a then-32-year-old American Graffiti veteran who’d struggled to get the project greenlit and famously took back-end profit and merchandising rights in lieu of a higher salary — the deal that would build a billion-dollar company. He returned to direct the prequels but stepped away from the original-trilogy sequels. Name him.




✓ Correct! George Lucas. The merchandising rights he kept (because Fox didn’t value them) became the financial bedrock of Lucasfilm and the basis of the modern toys-and-licensing megabusiness. After A New Hope, Lucas produced but didn’t direct Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner) or Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand), then directed all three prequels (1999–2005). He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 and stepped away from creative control of the sequels.

✗ Wrong. The answer is George Lucas. Steven Spielberg was Lucas’s close friend (and the godfather of his post-A-New-Hope career) but never directed a Star Wars film. Coppola was Lucas’s mentor at USC and at American Zoetrope. Irvin Kershner directed Empire Strikes Back. The original is Lucas’s.

03

In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader delivers cinema’s most-misquoted line at the climax of his Cloud City duel with Luke Skywalker. Vader severs Luke’s hand and reveals their relationship. The exact line is — for the record — “No, I am your father.” What relationship does it confirm?




✓ Correct! Vader is Anakin Skywalker, Luke’s father. The reveal was so jealously guarded that Mark Hamill was only told the real line on set the day they shot it (the script said “Obi-Wan killed your father”), and even James Earl Jones recorded the dub without knowing the full plot context. The line — commonly misquoted as “Luke, I am your father” — rewrote what trilogies could pull off and is broadly considered cinema’s most famous twist.

✗ Wrong. The answer is that Vader is Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker. The whole foundation of the Skywalker saga collapses to this single twist: Anakin (the Jedi prodigy of the prequels) becomes Vader after his fall. Luke and Leia are revealed in Return of the Jedi to be his twin children, separated at birth.

04

Yoda — the green, ear-twitching Jedi Master — was puppeted and voiced from his Empire Strikes Back debut through the prequels and the sequels by a single Muppet-show-veteran performer who also voices Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear. Name him.




✓ Correct! Frank Oz — longtime Jim Henson collaborator and voice/puppet work on Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Sam Eagle and Grover. Oz puppeted Yoda directly through The Phantom Menace before CGI took over for Attack of the Clones onward, but he’s continued to voice the character through the sequels and animated series. Yoda’s syntax was developed jointly by Lucas and Oz to feel old, foreign and hard-won.

✗ Wrong. The answer is Frank Oz. Jim Henson was Oz’s mentor and collaborator (he created the Muppets) but didn’t voice Yoda. Steve Whitmire took over Kermit after Henson’s 1990 death. Brian Henson is Jim’s son and runs the Henson company today. Yoda is Frank Oz’s.

05

In a deal that reshaped Hollywood, Disney acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion in cash and stock — bringing Star Wars, Indiana Jones, ILM and Skywalker Sound under the Disney umbrella. The deal also kicked off the sequel trilogy production. In what year did Disney close the acquisition?




✓ Correct! 2012 — specifically October 30. The deal was announced with simultaneous reveal that a Star Wars Episode VII was being developed for a 2015 release. Lucas had been quietly preparing his exit from Lucasfilm for years; Kathleen Kennedy had been brought in as co-chair months earlier specifically to take over. The Force Awakens came out three years later, in December 2015, kicking off the modern era.

✗ Wrong. The answer is 2012. 2009 is when Disney acquired Marvel ($4 billion). 2010 is the year before Lucas began signalling exit plans. 2014 is when production proper began on The Force Awakens. Lucasfilm joined Disney on October 30, 2012.

06

The Mandalorian launched as Disney+’s flagship original on November 12, 2019 — the day the streaming service itself launched. Created by Jon Favreau and run by Dave Filoni, the show centres on a helmeted bounty hunter who reluctantly becomes a foster father to “The Child” (Grogu). What is the Mandalorian’s real name?




✓ Correct! Din Djarin — played by Pedro Pascal under the helmet (with body double Brendan Wayne handling much of the physical work). The Mandalorian is widely credited with reviving Star Wars on TV, popularising the StageCraft LED-volume virtual production technology now used across Hollywood, and turning baby Yoda — Grogu — into the meme-economy phenomenon of late 2019. Three seasons have aired with a feature film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, set for May 2026.

✗ Wrong. The answer is Din Djarin. Boba Fett is the famous bounty hunter from the original trilogy, with his own Disney+ spinoff (The Book of Boba Fett, 2021). Cobb Vanth is the Tatooine marshal played by Timothy Olyphant. Bo-Katan Kryze is the Mandalorian princess played by Katee Sackhoff. The Mandalorian himself is Din Djarin.

07

Order 66 — the secret directive that turns the Republic’s clone troopers against their Jedi commanders and effectively ends the Jedi Order — is dramatised in the climactic third act of which prequel film?




✓ Correct! Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Palpatine’s “Execute Order 66” comm to the clone armies leads to the methodical, planet-by-planet liquidation of the Jedi Order — one of the saga’s most operatic sequences, scored to John Williams’ “Anakin’s Betrayal” cue. The same film features Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, the Mustafar duel with Obi-Wan, and his rebirth as Darth Vader in the suit. Widely re-evaluated as the best of the prequels.

✗ Wrong. The answer is Revenge of the Sith. Phantom Menace ends with Qui-Gon’s death and the unveiling of Darth Maul. Attack of the Clones ends with the Clone Wars beginning. Rogue One is set just before A New Hope, after Order 66 has long since happened. The Order 66 sequence is the climax of Episode III.

08

Andor (2022–25) is widely regarded as the most adult, politically literate Star Wars project ever made — a slow-burn prequel to Rogue One charting Cassian Andor’s radicalisation against the Empire. The series was created and showrun by a writer/director best known for the original Bourne trilogy and Michael Clayton. Name him.




✓ Correct! Tony Gilroy. He’d previously been brought in for extensive Rogue One reshoots in 2016, and Lucasfilm gave him near-total creative independence on Andor. Season 1 (12 episodes, 2022) is widely regarded as Star Wars’ finest dramatic writing ever; Season 2 (also 12 episodes, in four three-episode jumps across 2025) closes the gap to Rogue One’s opening scene. Gilroy’s prior credits: Bourne Identity / Supremacy / Ultimatum / Legacy, plus directing Michael Clayton (2007).

✗ Wrong. The answer is Tony Gilroy. Rian Johnson directed The Last Jedi (2017). Jon Favreau created The Mandalorian and is Lucasfilm’s Disney+-era animation/live-action lieutenant. Dave Filoni runs the Filoniverse (Clone Wars, Rebels, Ahsoka, the upcoming Heir to the Empire film). Andor is Tony Gilroy’s.

The Force Has Spoken · Final Tally
Your Galactic Standing

🗡️

/ 8

Jedi Master — or moisture farmer on Tatooine?

A top 10 box office finish requires over $500 million on average during the 21st century. The post-2020 average is $514.2 million. The Mandalorian and Grogu will finish well short of that figure, making it inevitable that Star Wars‘ movie would lose this spot at some point.

There are simply too many other movies that have or still can surpass Lucasfilm’s release. Some, like Toy Story 5, have been expected. Others, like Obsession, have been surprise hits and captured audiences’ attention far greater than The Mandalorian and Grogu. And with The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and more still to come, Star Wars was never going to keep this top 10 position.

The Mandalorian & Grogu May Be Safe From Disney’s Lowest Star Wars Finish

Mando and Grogu in an alley in Mandalorian & Grogu
Mando and Grogu in an alley in Mandalorian & Grogu

While The Mandalorian and Grogu is destined to finish with a lower total than Solo at this point, its finish in the yearly charts could fare better. The 2018 Han Solo origin story came out during one of the strongest years ever for the box office, leaving it to finish as the 24th highest-grossing film of the year.

That’s a low point for Disney’s Star Wars movies, which have otherwise finished #1 twice (The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi), #2 (Rogue One), and #7 (The Rise of Skywalker) for their respective years. The Mandalorian and Grogu will now join Solo as the only ones to miss out on a top 10 finish, even if its final placement winds up a bit higher.

There need to be 14 movies to make more than The Mandalorian‘s movie, and there are limited titles guaranteed to do so. The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Dune: Part Three, and Avengers: Doomsday will. Jumanji: Open World and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping should, too. Finding another eight movies that can make over $350 million is difficult.

If that many strong performers don’t come, The Mandalorian and Grogu will at least avoid setting another record-low figure for Disney’s Star Wars era after its disappointing box office run.


the-mandalorian-and-grogu-poster.jpg


Release Date

May 20, 2026

Runtime

132 minutes

Writers

Noah Kloor

Producers

Ian Bryce, Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni, Karen Gilchrist, John Bartnicki




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