Drinker's Chasers - Mando Is A Box Office Disaster

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]It is going to be interesting in the future if anyone does a thing like you've just done for this year. Like what were the movies that came out? Uh Mandalorian and Grou. It's not going to hit the same.

[00:00:10]>> Don't worry this brew. That's not going to be in the top 10 of box office for this year.

[00:00:16]>> Supergirl, you know.

[00:00:18]>> Yeah, I suppose on that subject actually we should talk a little bit about Mandalorian and Grou because it's not doing too well at the box office funnily enough. Uh it's currently sitting at 167 million worldwide. Um I believe they downgraded the estimates for the opening weekend or they downgraded uh its its box office tally. Um which was already below Solo: A Star Wars Story which was considered a flop. Uh so >> and that was 10 years ago nearly. Bear that in mind. So when you adjust for inflation.

[00:00:51]>> Yes. Uh, and as Frigy was good enough to share with me, uh, it was actually just beaten on last night, uh, by Obsession, >> a low budget horror movie done with less than a million dollars and it's currently beating a Star Wars movie at the box office.

[00:01:08]>> I [ __ ] love it. I love the timeline we're in. But I mean it's not even surprising like you know uh everybody's well I was about to say everybody's had their conversations about this film and that's kind of the end of it but not many people have had conversations about the movie cuz a lot of people haven't watched it but I mean what is there to why would anybody who has watched this movie go man you should pay money to go see this movie in a in a cinema that's something you should do let alone whether you want to watch it on streaming.

[00:01:36]>> Absolutely. I mean I certainly didn't but uh it's just As Mer said, like there was almost nothing to discuss about the film itself. The only interesting conversation to be had was going to be the box office performance. And now we're beginning to see it. And this this weekend, man, is going to be tough for it. It's going to be a brutal drop off, I think, because nobody is talking about it. There's no word of mouth. It is it is dead in the water, I think.

[00:02:05]>> And new movies are coming out. There's new stuff coming out like Back Rooms is coming out. like it's projected to have a $60 million opening domestic, not not including international. It's like yeah.

[00:02:15]And then the week after that there's that Master of the Universe movie which probably got to fail as well, but that's still, you know, another movie that's taken up screens. And then at that point, you're well into the summer movies. So, you know, if it was going to make money, this was the time to do it.

[00:02:29]And I mean, why would it have why would it have done that? Why would it have been successful? I can't believe they thought that it was it was a good idea.

[00:02:36]It's kind of crazy. Well, well, that's the thing. It's like, yeah, other movies are coming out, but I I don't think they will be taking any business from this.

[00:02:44]This is going to be very front-loaded.

[00:02:45]Anyone that was even slightly interested will have already seen it. I don't think anyone is really comparing it between any other movie, just like, oh, I really want to see these two movies, but I just can't decide. It's not that kind of territory. Even the Hollywood Reporter came out with a a title that said opens to a series low of 98 million in North America. Does it even matter? So, e even the corporate media no one cares about Star Wars anymore. it's not going to change anything. And their only cope was any other title opening to that would be celebrated. And it's like, yeah, but not all things are equal. And um they seem to forget a lot about budgets. For instance, this movie could have been a huge success if they just really lowered the budget down. Um realized, okay, Solo did this, this going to do something similar. We're going to cut everything down to basics. But they don't seem to be able to. They're still riding on the highs of what they used to and trying to live off that level. I think they would tell you that they did because the budget is Yeah. 165 million which by their stand they were like yeah you know that's low. Yeah that's kind of low but by their standards it is. Um and the thing is it looks worse than the TV show. Like I don't know if you >> season one of the TV show uh season 3 it looks better than I'd say because >> you know you get those >> Yeah. Well, you know you get those kind of like compilations of like some of the best shots and stuff of like season one, two, three, whatever. Um, yeah, I was looking at them and I was like, "God, there's some really nice shots from season one and two of The Mandalorian.

[00:04:09]Like it really beautiful landscapes, great composition and stuff. The the VFX look good." And then I look at this movie and I'm like, "No, this is kind of janky." And there's times when it looks really really rough like from a VFX point of view. And I just thought, man, how can you how can it be several years down the line and more way more money invested in it and it somehow doesn't look as good? I don't know if it's just bloat or what, but man, >> I don't know. 2019 is like the dividing line that you can often draw between sort of the the era before that and the era after because like all of the Star Wars sequel movies even The Rise of Skywalker which went through extensive re-shoots like broadly it looks good from a you know fidelity standpoint meanwhile you look at like a lot of the stuff that comes out afterward and the same goes for Marvel movies for a lot of stuff really it's the postco era has just sort of stayed at this same level of pretty horrendous quality on that front. Um, for whatever reason that is, >> that is also the excuse that Hollywood Reporter use for the box office, >> the pandemic. It's like it's still being dragged out 6 years later as the reason why no one will go to the cinemas. And at no point do they even try and analyze what changed? Like what is it that we can do to get these people back? It's not even a question. They're just like, well, I guess we just have to put up with things now. Um, >> movies that make like a billion dollars.

[00:05:34]>> Yes.

[00:05:36]But if you would think if you did genuinely believe that as an excuse that you were saying, you would try and find solutions to the problem that you're stating. Um whether it's true or not kind of thing in reality.

[00:05:49]>> Yeah. With Mandalorian this is uh I don't know in terms of what this does for Star Wars as a brand, right? In terms of its mainstream reception. We always said like, okay, it's probably not going to do great because there doesn't seem to be like a lot of anticipation around it, but like if this is essentially the only property that you have within um say Disney Plus or like anything that you've created yourselves beyond the OT and the prequels, um the only thing that was slightly successful from a merchandising point of view and then you put this out into the cinemas and nobody's watching it and it's a gigantic flop. Where can you even go as a brand there as a franchise?

[00:06:32]>> Well, the bank and everything on Star Fighter like that seems to be the thing going forward. And if the leaks are to be believed, it's supposed to be Ryan Gosling is taking a young force sensitive boy to Ray's temple. So, they're going to try and link it to Ry.

[00:06:51]>> Are they really though? Like, >> haven't they abandoned Ray now as a character? like her dead in the water.

[00:06:59]>> But they said one guy in Disney said she's our most marketable character, which is I don't know where the [ __ ] that guy's been >> that guy Kathleen Kennedy. That guy did a coma since 2015 just been like Ray, everyone loves Ray, man.

[00:07:17]>> Captain Fasma was their most marketable thing cuz it was a cool set of armor and then we found out that the character wasn't a character and then that was kind of the end of that. One of my favorite things is reminding people of Captain Fasma. Everyone's always like, "Wait, oh my god." It all comes flooding back. So much merchandise and marketing for that character and then look what they look what they decided they wanted to do with that character. That's kind of crazy. I mean, you know, on the on the front of like what are they meant to do with Star Wars? I've been thinking about this a bit. I find it very interesting that Andor in being really quality has uh kind of ruined the perception of modern Star Wars particularly with the John Favro Dave Fon approach that they've been doing over the last little while of really like shallow and unambitious from a storytelling standpoint that when you actually have like a real show come along like the first good thing that they produced like under Disney Star Wars be so good to then return back to the same incredibly boring um just thin storytelling and just reference slop.

[00:08:16]Um, that's becoming more and more untenable, you know, now that we've had an example of a great show.

[00:08:23]>> Well, they don't have any actual stories because in an interview, John Favro said the reason why they made the Mando and Grou was Lucasfilm approached them and said, "Hey, we haven't done a movie in a while. Can you do something with these characters?" And then he said, "Okay, I condensed the season 4 scripts I already written into a two-hour movie and just removed all the references."

[00:08:45]>> That you can absolutely tell that's what it is as well. It's got the feel of a TV show.

[00:08:51]>> Like there's no story like like the difference is Tony Gilroy is actually trying to have characters, plot, themes, all these type of things. John Favro is like, "Ah, [ __ ] it. Just throw whatever we can on the screen."

[00:09:02]Have you seen the clip where Jeremy Alan White talks about meeting John Favro in some party and Pharaoh's like, "You should be in the next Star War." And he's like, "Sure, man." Okay.

[00:09:12]>> And then they like send him pieces of a script or whatever. And and then he's like recording lines, not really knowing what he's even doing in the film in full. And he said they keep everything under wraps. And so by the time I'd like done everything, I wasn't even sure exactly what was going on. And yeah, there I am. I'm in Star War. It's just like what? I when you started that when you started that anecdote, I thought it was going to go down the the lines of um uh [ __ ] who was who the [ __ ] did Thor Ragnarok blanked on his when he's like, "Oh, we should bring Natalie Portman into into Star Wars like completely forgetting that she was in it." I thought that's where you were going with the story. Like he'd already been cast and recorded his lines and John Fabro was like, "Hey, you should be in this new Star Wars movie. I am in it.

[00:09:56]Considering that is how we got Road to the Hud's voice and how Jack Black and Lizo ended up in this like why do they expect anything other than complete failure?

[00:10:08]Nobody gives a [ __ ] John Fabro at some party's like hey man how you doing? Hey.

[00:10:12]Yeah. He's like do you want to be the big slug dude in the next movie? He's like yeah man let's go.

[00:10:16]>> Sweet. Maybe we I think maybe we need to let go of the idea that John Fabro is going to save any franchise at this point.

[00:10:25]But he felt that way for this point. I mean, for the last 10 years, he's been making nothing but [ __ ] >> He's just a company. Yes, man. He'll just do whatever Disney tells him to.

[00:10:35]It's Dave Fona who makes the absolutely [ __ ] terrible [ __ ] scripts. Like, >> he cameoed in this movie and called himself Trapper Wolf.

[00:10:44]>> Trap.

[00:10:48]Um, it's worse with Favro because he made a film about the difference between a company man and an artist and then he was like, I'm opting for being a company man.

[00:10:58]>> The company man gets lots of money.

[00:11:03]>> I think the issue was Mandal I think the issue was that Mandalorian and Grou was successful enough that it still loses money and isn't enough to be a movie, but because it's the best thing they do, they're kind of trapped at that level.

[00:11:14]it didn't fail badly enough for them to write it off as an option. So they always think if we just make it a bit better, if we just do it again, maybe we can push it over and it probably would have been better if everything had just disastrously failed. So they were left with no other choice but to take risks and make big swings into new areas they hadn't done before. As long as there's something that if as long as they think Ray is a fallback option, they'll forever just keep pumping out the same kind of stuff cuz they they will see that as a safer option even if it's probably likely to fail than risking everything and failing even worse.