The Mandalorian and Grogu is not off to a massive start in theaters.
According to Deadline, the film earned $12 million from Thursday night previews ahead of its official opening day in theaters on Friday, May 22.
While $12 million is not nothing, it’s also not up to the standards of most mega-blockbusters on their first Thursday in multiplexes. In fact, that number comes in behind the previous lowest-grossing movie in Star Wars history, 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Solo, a prequel about the young Han Solo starring Alden Ehrenreich, grossed $14.1 million in Thursday previews. It went on to earn $103 million over its opening weekend, and eventually took in about $393 million in theaters — the lowest total for any live-action Star Wars movie to date.
It should go without saying that if The Mandalorian and Grogu fails to beat even those low numbers, that would not be a positive outcome for Lucasfilm and Disney.
READ MORE: A Brutally Honest Kid Reviews The Mandalorian and Grogu
It’s probably worth noting that The Mandalorian and Grogu reportedly cost less to make than Solo. The budget number you see online for the latter starts around $300 million (and in some places is listed as high as $365 million). The budget estimate online for The Mandalorian is roughly half that — $165 million.
If those numbers are even close to being accurate, and The Mandalorian and Grogu earns the exact same amount in theaters as Solo did then the news is not quite as disastrous as it appears, because it cost far less to produce (and, thanks to Baby Yoda, will surely reap far higher merchandising profits than Solo did).
Nonetheless, if the final box office numbers for The Mandalorian and Grogu emerge, and it winds up becoming the lowest-grossing Star Wars ever, that’s a disaster — especially since Solo appeared in theaters during a stretch when multiplexes were regularly filled with new Star Wars movies, while The Mandalorian and Grogu is the first Star Wars back on the big screen in seven years.
Theoretically, there should be pent-up demand for this movie. If there isn’t … that’s not a great sign for the future of the franchise on the big screen. (The fact that The Mandalorian and Grogu is spun off from a small screen series, is a detail worth noting and likely a huge contributing factor in its tepid box-office performance.)
The Mandalorian and Grogu is now playing in theaters everywhere. Regardless of its final grosses, there is at least one more Star Wars movie headed to theaters. Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter already has a release date set for one year from now, in late May of 2027.
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Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky