The pandemic was a tumultuous time for numerous industries, perhaps none more so than the entertainment industry. In a matter of days, the entire infrastructure and established traditions of this entire industry were turned upside down, as theaters were forced to close and audiences were kept within the confines of their own homes. While all of this was thoroughly unexpected and surprising to all, few companies were as well-suited to adapt to this new cultural norm like the Walt Disney Company.
Just months prior to the commencement of COVID-fueled lockdowns, in November of 2019, Disney had launched its inaugural streaming service, Disney+, to record-shattering numbers, largely bolstered by the presence of the first-ever live-action Star Wars TV show, The Mandalorian. As such, while other production companies grappled with how to best proceed amidst this new landscape, Disney opted to simply shift all of their planned theatrical releases to streaming exclusives. However, it was ultimately these exact decisions that would lead things to the place where they are today: with the first theatrically released Star Wars film in nearly a decade, The Mandalorian and Grogu, tracking to debut to the franchise’s lowest box office in decades.
In the wake of the critical and commercial disappointment that was The Rise of Skywalker, Disney leadership was already beginning to reconsider their plan moving forward with a galaxy far, far away. It was in the middle of this uncertainty at the tail-end of 2019 that Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian became an unexpected cultural sensation, with ‘Baby Yoda’ becoming a zeitgeist-capturing monolith of brand synergy. Suddenly, the answer to all of Disney’s perceived Star Wars woes seemed apparent to the leadership at House of Mouse, such as Bob Iger: pivot to streaming.
And so they did, cranking out a genuinely insane number of live-action Star Wars streaming shows in the ensuing years. While these performed well at first, they inevitably tapered off in terms of popularity. Around this same time period, Disney was realizing that the full-tilt embrace of streaming had harmed their theatrical potential in a post-lockdown world, and Iger was intent on rectifying that. And so, he decided to commission a number of theatrically-released films that would seek to capitalize on the popularity of streaming exclusives, but bring audiences back to theaters. The first few of these went extremely well, with Moana 2 (capitalizing on Moana’s streaming success) and the live-action Lilo & Stitch (capitalizing on the original animated film’s streaming success) each making over a billion dollars at the box office. But the last of these films, Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu, always seemed like a far stranger choice.
The film was greenlit after several other previously announced new Star Wars films, and yet was rushed into production. Soon after, reports emerged that it was to be the cheapest Star Wars film made in years, and was to feature elements of a planned-but-scrapped fourth season of Favreau’s Mandalorian TV show. Where those prior hits like Moana 2 and Lilo & Stitch were capitalizing on the success of beloved properties that got an extra boost from streaming, The Mandalorian and Grogu just looked like a streaming property, full-stop. Since then, everything about the marketing has failed to sell it as anything other than just ‘more’ of that streaming show that was popular with audiences several years ago.
This has all resulted in the film currently tracking for an opening weekend gross of $70 million; the lowest in Disney Star Wars history. As a point of comparison, when Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story opened to a lackluster weekend in 2018, it sent Disney into full-blown panic mode; and The Mandalorian and Grogu is currently slated to make approximately $15 million less than that movie did in its opening frame.
While there is still room for things to change, it is now an unavoidable fact that Disney well-and-truly siphoned a lot of the prestige value of its most prized possessions during the pandemic years and streaming pivot, and projects like The Mandalorian and Grogu are now being forced to pay that inevitable price.
The Mandalorian and Grogu premieres on theaters on May 22.
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