Based on the current trajectory and comparisons to similar Star Wars releases, The Mandalorian and Grogu is projected to finish its theatrical run with a global total between $325 million and $375 million. This figure would place it below Solo ($392.9 million), officially making it the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars film in history.
It’s already getting passed up by the two recent horror movie releases (both of which I saw last night and enjoyed more than Mando and Grogu)… Poor word of mouth and the knowledge that this will come to streaming in a couple months absolutely sunk any hope of it having a few good weekends to at least break even. Just a bad financial decision all around to release this movie in 2026. It won’t be AS much of a financial loss compared to Solo since they didn’t break the bank on making this, but based on the poor performance here we can definitely expect Disney to make even less movies like this. I bet after Starfighter (the last real Kennedy legacy project, at least that we know of that isn’t in production hell) it will be a long time before we see another “one-off” film in theaters.
I think we can see Disney will no longer act like Star Wars can carry several parallel theatrical experiments. The projects that survive will be the ones that either launch a trilogy/saga or cleanly capitalize on Filoni’s existing story infrastructure.
Pre-2019 tons of parallel theatrical announcements
2019 - Rise of Skywalker (Most universally disliked SW film ever)
2020-25 - NOTHING
2026 - Mando and Grogu (FLOP)
2027 - Starfighter (TBD)
Rey NJO? Placed on indefinite hold and removed from Lucasfilm’s active release schedule. Probably never sees the light of day under Filoni and Brennan. I bet this survives only if folded into the broader post-sequel relaunch with “The Hunt for Ben Solo”, maybe combining these two into one? I think Sequel related films are all going on the backburner though based on recent reports of that era and trends from the parks.
Dawn of the Jedi? Reportedly a script, but current reporting frames it as “on hold”.
Lando? Script turned in but I don’t see any shot of this going to theaters
Droid Story and Rogue Squadron? Both 99% confirmed dead as theatrical releases
Waititi film? Script turned into Kennedy and never greenlight, again very likely this is dead under new direction
Post ST Kinberg trilogy? Really the only thing that hasn’t received “bad news” necessarily, and is totally an unknown.
Filoni “Heir to the Empire”? Rumors that it is going to be a D+ ~4-5 hour series instead of a theater release… But nothing confirmed on that.
Really I don’t see anything outside of Filoni’s project moving forward as is. I bet we don’t hear anything officially until Celebration 2027 and it will probably be Filoni’s project. I bet we get like 1 clean announcement of the next major project there. But that’s a month before Starfighter, so they are really going to be pushing that hard because they will need a win BAAAAD. They probably won’t want to distract from that “hype” much. I think our future is Ahsoka S2 and some animated projects, Filoni’s project in ~2029, and then a new trilogy 2030+.