From the beginning, Star Wars has been a box office powerhouse. The franchise’s first 12 films (including 2008’s The Clone Wars) combined to gross over $10 billion at the worldwide box office. So, whenever a new Star Wars movie is making its way to theaters, the expectation is that it will be one of the year’s biggest releases. However, projections have been a bit more tempered in the case of The Mandalorian and Grogu. Despite marking Star Wars’ return to the big screen after a seven-year hiatus, anticipation for the film hasn’t been very high. For proof, one only has to look at the Thursday box office numbers.
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According to Variety, The Mandalorian and Grogu grossed $12 million domestically from Thursday preview screenings that took place on May 21st. That figure is a little lower than what 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story brought in ($14.1 million). Coming into the weekend, The Mandalorian and Grogu was projected to earn between $80-100 million domestically over the extended Memorial Day weekend. The worldwide debut is expected to be around $160 million.
The Mandalorian and Grogu Won’t Be a Box Office Bomb Like Solo
On paper, earning less than Solo sounds like a disastrous result. To date, Solo is the only Star Wars movie to lose money at the box office, so it would appear The Mandalorian and Grogu is poised to suffer the same fate. However, there’s an extremely important difference between these two films that people need to keep in mind. One was far more expensive to make than the other. Solo cost around $300 million to produce, an unfortunate byproduct of the extensive reshoots that took place after Ron Howard replaced Phil Lord and Chris Miller as director. In stark contrast, The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s budget is around $165 million, the lowest for a Disney-era Star Wars movie.
That budget should be The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s saving grace. Assuming it performs in line with the projections during its opening weekend, the film will recoup nearly all of its production costs in a single weekend, putting it on pace to turn a profit. It’s important to keep in mind that $165 million figure does not include marketing a distribution costs, so the break-even point is probably somewhere more in the range of $330 million worldwide (the old rule of thumb was a movie had to earn double its budget to break even), but that should be attainable. Solo ended its run with $392.9 million worldwide.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is opening over a favorable box office window. It’s the highest-profile new release during a holiday weekend, and there won’t be another big-scale genre movie opening until Masters of the Universe in early June. The Mandalorian and Grogu will be facing minimal competition for its target audiences over the next couple of weeks, so hopefully it can take advantage of that and make a decent amount of money before the wave of summer blockbuster hopefuls arrives next month.
Something else working in The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s favor is that moviegoers seem to be enjoying the film. While the Rotten Tomatoes critics score is one of Star Wars’ lowest, the audience rating is considerably higher, suggesting that there’s a stark divide between critics and viewers. If positive word of mouth spreads amongst the fan base, that could help The Mandalorian and Grogu have strong legs at the box office, which would go a long way in ensuring it turns a healthy profit before the PVOD and home media revenue streams start up.
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