‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ is a ‘perfect dream’ for Pedro Pascal
Pedro Pascal says it was “an absolute dream” to work alongside Martin Scorsese and Sigourney Weaver in The Mandalorian and Grogu.
It’s been a long time, but movie fans are finally heading back to a galaxy far, far away.
According to ComScore estimates released on Sunday, May 24, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” the first new Star Wars movie since 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker,” grossed $82 million at the domestic box office in its first three days. The film is expected to gross $102 million over four days, factoring in Memorial Day box office receipts.
This is the lowest opening weekend box office gross for a Star Wars movie released by Disney, albeit by a small margin. In 2018, the Han Solo prequel, Solo: A Star Wars Story, similarly opened with $84 million in three days and $103 million by Memorial Day.
For “Han Solo,” these numbers were considered extremely disappointing, and the film ultimately failed as a box office success. However, The Mandalorian & Grogu reportedly has a much lower budget, so it should have an easier path to profitability.
According to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, The Mandalorian cost $165 million to make. That would make it cheaper than other recent Star Wars movies, giving it different box office expectations, and it wouldn’t need to reach the enormous heights of previous films in the series to be successful. For comparison, the budget for Solo was reportedly over $250 million, but the price went up due to extensive reshoots after the original director was fired during production.
Still, the release of “The Mandalorian” is certainly a reversal from “Star Wars,” which was at its box office peak. In 2015, The Force Awakens grossed a staggering $247 million domestically, and remains the highest-grossing film in U.S. history, even when adjusted for inflation. Its sequels, 2017’s The Last Jedi and 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, opened with $220 million and $177 million, respectively, and the spinoff Rogue One also had a strong opening in 2016 with $155 million.
Lucasfilm always planned to take a break from releasing Star Wars movies in theaters after 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. However, that hiatus turned out to be much longer than expected, and years after the trilogy split, the studio seemed to be struggling to figure out the best way to reboot Star Wars on the big screen. Several Star Wars movies have been announced for theatrical release starting in 2019, including a fighter pilot movie called Rogue Squadron, which was previously scheduled for release in 2023.
However, none of these projects came to fruition, and years passed without a new “Star Wars” movie in sight. All the while, the series has lived on the small screen with numerous Disney+ shows.
By 2024, Lucasfilm seemed to be looking for a safe, reliable bet on a Star Wars movie that wouldn’t be hard to get off the ground, so it turned to The Mandalorian, the most popular of its Disney+ shows, and catapulted Baby Yoda into a pop culture phenomenon in 2019. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” continues the show’s story, with Pedro Pascal returning as bounty hunter Din Djarin, but with a plot that is familiar to newcomers who haven’t watched the series.
The Mandalorian & Grogu received mixed reviews, with a critic approval rating of 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the lowest in the series.
But audiences seem to like The Mandalorian well enough that it should find solid footage in theaters as the summer continues. Moviegoers polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average rating of A-. This is the same average rating as “Han Solo” and better than “The Rise of Skywalker,” which received a B+. However, it falls short of “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi,” which each received an A rating. “Rogue One” also received an A rating.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is largely a standalone story without many loose ends, so it doesn’t hint much at where Star Wars will go in the future. Also, the fact that it’s based on a TV show may have limited its audience or forced some moviegoers to wait to watch it on Disney+.
But a bigger test of the franchise’s health will come next summer with Star Wars: Starfighter, an all-new adventure starring Ryan Gosling that will take the series’ timeline beyond the ending of The Rise of Skywalker for the first time. There’s a lot of pressure on the film to establish a new era of Star Wars movies and prove that the Force is still strong on the brand.
