When the Walt Disney Corporation purchased Lucasfilm back in 2012 for a grand total of $4 billion, it was in the name of acquiring one of the most valuable assets in all of cinematic history: Star Wars. Between the original trilogy and prequel trilogy, George Lucas’s space-opera blockbusters had become not only hugely impactful within the cultural zeitgeist but also veritable cash cows.
A huge contributor to all of this was the fact that ever since the first film was released in May of 1977, there had been a gargantuan swell of anticipation leading up to each new theatrical release, with years of time between each one of them.
The Mandalorian and Grogu sees lowest opening for Star Wars-Disney movie
So when Disney initially acquired Star Wars and immediately began talking about releasing at least one film a year, it led many to worry. And now, over a decade later, those initial concerns have officially been confirmed, as the latest Star Wars film, Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu, has opened to the lowest audience turnout in the whole of the Disney era.
Over the course of the weekend, The Mandalorian and Grogu made just $82 million domestically, a number that’s estimated to have grown to $102 million through Monday. This is a paltry sum compared to the larger openings of early Disney Star Wars ventures like The Force Awakens (which raked in nearly $250 million) or The Last Jedi (which made $220 million).
Those amounts make The Mandalorian and Grogu, which like The Force Awakens over a decade ago, was meant to champion the franchise back to the big screen in triumphant fashion, seem outright miniscule, but even comparing it to lesser performers within the franchise still leave it coming up short.
For example, when Solo: A Star Wars Story released over Memorial Day Weekend in 2018 and netted only $84 million domestically over the three-day weekend, it was viewed as an abject failure by Disney. It ended up making $103 million domestically over the four-day holiday weekend, both numbers slightly higher than the latest Star Wars film.
By and large, The Mandalorian and Grogu’s stumble is not being treated with nearly the same kind of weight that earlier spinoff’s failure was, despite the numbers being comparable. This is partially due to the difference in budgets. Solo was reshot so substantially that it wound up costing nearly $300 million to make, which makes The Mandalorian and Grogu’s status as the cheapest Star Wars film to date a major benefactor, as the film doesn’t have to recoup as much in order to turn a profit.
Despite these quantifiers at seemingly every turn so that Disney can act like The Mandalorian and Grogu is actually still a success if you just look at it “from a certain point of view,” this is an objectively poor box office return for this kind of behemoth blockbuster.
Star Wars films used to regularly break a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, and with this opening, there is approximately zero percent chance of that happening with this film. Thanks to pivoting the franchise to a glut of streaming shows in the years between movies and prioritizing quantity over quality, Disney has turned their $4 billion purchase into a case of steadily declining returns.
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