It goes without saying that there are few titans quite like the Star Wars franchise. One of the oldest film series in Hollywood history, it continues to evolve with the times to bring fans back to movie theaters - and, in recent years, onto Disney Plus - with success after success. But recently, it has run into a number of roadblocks. The most recent is one that absolutely nobody wanted to see happen.
The franchise made its long-awaited return to movie theaters this weekend, bringing its two most successful small screen exports along to do it. The Mandalorian and Grogu, a sequel to Disney Plus series The Mandalorian, arrived in movie theaters on Memorial Day weekend and it has received a positive response from fans (and a mixed-to-positive response from critics). Although it overperformed against lower box office projections, the Week 2 performance tells a very different story.
The Mandalorian and Grogu drops 70% in Week 2, behind indie horrors at the box office
The numbers are in and The Mandalorian and Grogu has been dethroned at the top of the box office. But the Star Wars movie losing its No. 1 spot at the box office isn't the story here; it's how easily it lost it. The film fell to third place in its second weekend, bringing in $25 million, behind Obsession's $26.4 million and Backrooms' stunning $81 million debut.
While industry analysts were predicting that Mando and Grogu would mimic previous blockbusters in facing a major Week 2 drop (with initial predictions suggesting around 60%), few foresaw a 70% drop. After all, this is a Star Wars movie released at the beginning of summer blockbuster season - and during a week when there aren't any other blockbuster releases - surely it should have held onto that No. 1 spot pretty easily. Unfortunately for fans, that reality seems too far, far away right now.
There are reasons for the sharp drop here: First thing's first, indie horror is overperforming. Obsession has once again made history, increasing its domestic takings for the second weekend in a row, showing that positive word-of-mouth is still a thing in today's day and age. Now, Backrooms is already the next chapter in that quickly-evolving story of the indie horror explosion.
The other reason is a bit more personal for Star Wars fans, and that's that the franchise has had an issue figuring out what the next chapter of its long, storied history looks like. The launch of the Disney Plus streaming service in 2019 allowed it to sidestep the silver screen issues that led to its first flop in Solo: A Star Wars Story and a mixed response to the ending of the billion-dollar Skywalker Saga, and it was The Mandalorian and Grogu that helped it pull that off.
After two successful seasons of that show, Star Wars' Disney Plus era began to falter. Amid success stories like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Andor, there were underperformers like The Acolyte and Skeleton Crew. Meanwhile, direct Mandalorian spinoff The Book of Boba Fett was considered a disappointment while the third season of the main series was considered underwhelming too. With the franchise's future unclear, the writers and actors' Hollywood strikes presented Lucasfilm and Disney with a chance to change things up - and, with that, The Mandalorian season 4 was redeveloped into The Mandalorian and Grogu.
This was a risky approach considering that it required fans to have knowledge of three seasons of a TV series and didn't promise to offer anything new to the Star Wars franchise, but the studio was able to take that risk provided there was some safeguarding in place. For starters, this did not have the typical super-sized budget that a typical Star Wars movie would boast. It cost $165 million to make, which could actually be calculated as $144 million budget once you take into account that it reportedly earned $21.75 million in the state of California's tax credits, so it wasn't much more expensive than a typical season of The Mandalorian (which has a budget of $120 million per season).
There is also the streaming factor to take into account. Regardless of whether the studios purused a fourth season or spinoff movie, Mando was going to drive subscribers to the Disney Plus streaming service. It's well-established that the platform will be the movie's streaming home whenever it does come out, so anyone who considers themselves a fan of the franchise but didn't go to see it in movie theaters will definitely tune into it when it arrives on the streamer. This is essentially making the familiarity that we all developed with Star Wars on TV work for them, because even if The Mandalorian and Grogu's box office legs are weak, its streaming legs will be much, much longer.
Regardless of the overall overexposure of the Star Wars brand, it's still one of the biggest in Hollywood history. Furthermore, The Mandalorian is an established Disney Plus brand, so you can rest assured that it will enjoy a lengthy, successful run on that platform when it makes its presence felt there.
Speaking of established brands, Star Wars has always been a merchandise titan, but that reached a whole new level of peak when it came to Grogu. It's safe to say that the character's cinematic debut will drive even more sales for Disney and Lucasfilm, ensuring that The Mandalorian and Grogu turns a major profit overall - regardless of whether that actually happens in movie theaters.
Star Wars will look to pick itself back up and dust itself off when it heads back to movie theaters next with Star Wars: Starfighter, which stars Ryan Gosling in the lead role and tells a brand new story in the future of the franchise. You can bet that Disney, Lucasfilm, and all involved are hoping that this one will be the future of the franchise if not giving it a direction to go in at the very least.
The Mandalorian and Grogu has arrived in movie theaters.
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