Boba Fett won't be in The Mandalorian movie because no one liked his show
By Dan Selcke
Boba Fett has been a popular Star Wars character for decades, ever since he first appeared in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back.* Once Disney bought the rights to Star Wars and started making TV shows, it seemed only natural to give him a series. Sure, he was swallowed by the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi, but we can write around that.
But when The Book of Boba Fett arrived on Disney+ a couple years back, reception was muted. Boba Fett, played by Temuera Morrison, wasn't the masked, gunslinging bounty hunter of mystery fans remembered but a community leader trying to clean up Jabba the Hutt's old crime empire. Plus, a big chunk of his series was basically season 2.5 of The Mandalorian, another Star Wars series; Boba Fett barely appears in the best episodes of his own show.
That brings us to The Mandalorian & Grogu, a movie version of The Mandalorian due out on May 22, 2026. Morrison admitted at Fan Expo Chicago that he will not be in the movie, nor is there any news about a second season of The Book of Boba Fett. "I'm still waiting for a phone call to be quite honest," he said, according to ScreenRant. "I think we're just put on the shelf for a little bit. Maybe we come off the shelf later."
ScreenRant opines that "this show's reception does seem to have impacted the future of the character in the franchise." Several outlets are reporting that as a quote direct from Morrison, but it's actually the author of the original ScreenRant article giving their opinion. The only Morrison quote is the one above.
That said, it's easy to believe that the middling reception to The Book of Boba Fett has indeed affected how much Disney wants to use this iteration of the character going forward. For a while there, Disney was spraying fans with a fire hose of Star Wars content on TV, from The Book of Boba Fett to Obi-Wan Kenobi to The Acolyte. (A new show, Skeleton Crew, premieres this December.) Last year, Disney CEO Bob Iger mused that the studio may have gone too hard on its big franchises, so I predict a culling to come. Things will get pared back a bit, and Boba Fett will be a part of it.
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*Technically, he first appeared in the 1978 Star Wars Holiday special, but he really only became popular after Empire, so just leave leave it.
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