This week, the new Star Wars picture – the first live action film since 2019’s commercially successful but largely ridiculed Rise of Skywalker – will come out in cinemas. Clunkily entitled The Mandalorian and Grogu, it is a big-screen spin-off of the once-successful and now largely passé Mandalorian series. A lot is riding on its success, and Lucasfilm, now controlled by Dave Filoni, will be very relieved if it is a hit.
Unfortunately, audiences don’t seem especially interested. Advance word on it has been mediocre for some time now – the words “feature-length television movie” have been used more than once – and the box office prediction for its opening weekend is currently somewhere between $70 and $85 million. Which might sound like a big hit, but given that The Rise of Skywalker made nearly $90 million on its opening day nearly seven years ago, this is an unimpressive figure, which may of course decline further if word of mouth is brutally negative.
If it does underperform – “flop” is a bit strong – then questions will be asked of Filoni’s judgement. Whether next summer’s Ryan Gosling-starring Star Wars: Starfighter is similarly doomed – and if audiences are weary of a series that has been systematically exploited and therefore ruined for years. With the more than honorable exception of the excellent Andor – which, if rumors are to be believed, Filoni was bewildered by – there hasn’t been anything any good in the Star Wars universe since Lucasfilm was acquired by Disney for $4 billion back in 2012.
