Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu Box Office Is Dead On Arrival

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]All right, ladies and gents. The Mandalorian and Grou box office estimates opening weekend are disastrous.

[00:00:07]It is uh unfortunately under a massively sustained campaign to I guess try and make people think otherwise, but it's really not good. It's genuinely not good. The box office estimates are terrible. Uh, and when you begin lining it up and comparing it with other movies, you know, that are Star Wars related, it's difficult to pass up how anyone, again, outside of genuinely people that have a vested interest in the movie are able to frame this as anything but a disaster.

[00:00:42]Okay, it it's just not good. We're on tomatoes just as a brief aside because obviously the reviews are coming out and remember critics are largely largely quite favorable to Disney and Star Wars.

[00:00:54]It's got a 61%. It's pretty goddamn bad.

[00:00:58]Um so, you know, take from that what you will. I mean, it's not exactly great, is it? Rise of Skywalker, for instance, just to compare because I think people forget. 51%.

[00:01:12]Yeah. Okay.

[00:01:15]So 61% 51%. It's not great. It's not great at all by any I tell you how's it got 86%.

[00:01:24]How bizarre. Anyway, so these are two movies which looking like the critics are just seemingly unable to be massively positive about it in any way, shape, or form.

[00:01:35]You know, the old Rise of Skywalker and now, of course, Mandalorian and Grou.

[00:01:39]But like I said, it's just not looking great. You've got Hollywood Reporter, uh, which they say here, we'll just take a look at Star Wars.

[00:01:48]Mandalorian and Grou targets 80 million plus US box office. Okay. Now, a lot of people are saying, "Oh, it's going to do 160 million." Yeah, that's worldwide.

[00:01:59]$80 million opening weekend domestic isn't great. Not for a Star Wars movie.

[00:02:05]That's disastrous.

[00:02:08]That's genuinely disastrous.

[00:02:11]So, this has been doing the rounds and then everyone's been posting on Twitter about it and going absolutely nutso, which is heavily comical. We'll look at that in a minute. Um, but let's have a look and see what they say. So, it says, "Can Baby Yoda become a cultural touchstone once again?" No. No, it can't. That's the major question on Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grou opens on the big screen of a Memorial Day weekend. The film continues the story of Mando um and Grou, of course, Baby Yoda.

[00:02:39]Uh, so the scrutiny couldn't be more intense. A standalone movie or not, it's the first Star Wars film to play in theaters in seven years for a host of reasons, beginning with the pandemic and followed by the labor strikes. I mean, it was also to do with the fact Disney had a string. Well, they had they had a solo, which was a flop, and they were like, "Oh, yeah, we we're going to stop now." Actually, that was the main reason.

[00:03:05]That was the main reason they stopped.

[00:03:08]Tracking services show The Mandalorian and Grou opening to roughly $82 million at the domestic box office for 4 days.

[00:03:17]Cross Memorial Day weekend is awful.

[00:03:20]Some exhibitors see it coming in as high as 95 to 100.

[00:03:24]Okay, that's better, but still not good.

[00:03:26]That would be on the lower end of any Star Wars title released by Disney since the company paid $4 billion to buy it.

[00:03:36]That's that's that's one of the lowest.

[00:03:41]So yeah, it's not good. None of this is good.

[00:03:45]It could potentially end up the lowest domestically ever, not adjusted for inflation. Globally, Disney Insiders, so shills, like actual people that work for them, expect The Mandalorian and Grou to hit at least 160 million. And that's only because it's basically rolling out as a worldwide uh you know the releases all in conjunction with one another. That's terrible.

[00:04:16]That's really not good. It has notched more than 25 million in sales domestically.

[00:04:21]Uh maybe again that's still not good.

[00:04:25]Others who pay close attention to social metrics are more bullish. a major advantage is arguably the most family-friendly title of any Star Wars film.

[00:04:35]It's not good. I mean, look, Solo, the movie uh which basically ended, right? It basically ended Star Wars on the big screen for a while. Debuted to 104 million over Memorial Day weekend domestically to 393 million globally, right? That was a low point. 393 million globally. This is estimated to do $160 million globally. How anyone can say that this is good? Like what are you high? Are you smoking something? Like what is going on?

[00:05:17]Genuinely doesn't make any sense how anyone can frame this as positive.

[00:05:20]That's a disaster. But those numbers 104 million and 393 million are unadjusted for inflation.

[00:05:32]So yeah. No, that's really bad.

[00:05:36]That's really bad that this movie is tracking way less than half of it.

[00:05:44]Way less than half of it.

[00:05:49]You see this? How much money does the Mandalorian and Grou actually need to make to break even? Well, let's see.

[00:05:55]Let's have a read of what they what they think on here, shall we?

[00:06:00]Ladies and gents, put the dark reader on for you. So it's got an approximate you can see this California film commission filings Mando and Grou about 166.4 million in qualified California production expenditure figure widely reported by entertainment trades as the film's effective production budget. Uh but it's more than that obviously because they're doing like just ridiculous marketing and it is ridiculous marketing. It's everywhere.

[00:06:30]It's absolutely everywhere. Uh there was some uh big old push for it around somewhere. I can't remember. Anyway, it it's just huge marketing huge huge marketing budget. So 160 was 166.4 million is just its base. No marketing included.

[00:06:49]It's got loads. I mean that this article is thinking that it could push the total to nearly $300 million.

[00:06:55]I know some people will be like, "Yeah, but but marketing's factored in." Well, I still it's still money. They still have to spend it. So, you can still you can still factor that into the total that they need to do.

[00:07:11]You see this here from this chat before they start lying to you. Mandalorian Grou cost 166 million to make. Advertising and marketing likely anotherund 100 to 150 million. So about 300 million distributors take 40 to 50% at the top.

[00:07:29]It needs roughly 530 to 630 million worldwide to break even. That's bad.

[00:07:35]This movie is genuinely dead on arrival.

[00:07:39]Like no word of a lie. It's dead on arrival. Apathy is set in. People don't care. People have checked out of the franchise. It is dead. And you did it to yourself, Disney.