Can Disney recapture the Force with ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’?

After a 6½-year hiatus from theaters, “Star Wars” returns to the big screen this weekend with “The Mandalorian and Grogu.”

This time around, however, the franchise faces a much different universe than it did in 2019 when the last film came out. For one, theatrical attendance has fallen dramatically since “Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker” grossed more than $1 billion worldwide in the pre-pandemic days.

Then, there’s Walt Disney Co.-owned Lucasfilm’s own trajectory. In the last few years, new “Star Wars” stories have come only via streaming series on Disney+. And since the service debuted in 2019, the San Francisco-based studio pumped out 13 shows, including “The Mandalorian,” which inspired the film, though others received mixed reviews. Lucasfilm is also under new leadership, as veterans Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan are now co-presidents after George Lucas’ handpicked successor, Kathleen Kennedy, stepped down this year.

It all adds up to a crucial question: Can the nearly 50-year-old franchise still delight its longtime fans, while bringing in new viewers to help it endure?

“There’s a lot riding on this,” said Jeff Bock, box-office analyst at entertainment data and research firm Exhibitor Relations. “It’s close to a make-or-break strategic test … just to see if the modern ‘Star Wars’ is still viable theatrically.”

“The Mandalorian and Grogu” is expected to gross around $80 million in the U.S. and Canada for the four-day Memorial Day weekend, according to studio estimates.

That would rank among some of the top openings this year, including Amazon MGM Studios’ “Project Hail Mary” ($80.5 million) and Disney-owned 20th Century Studios’ “The Devil Wears Prada 2” ($76.7 million). Another big sci-fi installment, Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Entertainment’s “Dune: Part Two,” opened to $82.5 million in 2024.

But for a “Star Wars” movie, that’s considered low.

2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker,” for example, opened to $177 million, with 2015’s “The Force Awakens” and 2017’s “The Last Jedi” each debuting to more than $200 million. The $84-million opening for 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story” was considered a disappointment at the box office.

To be sure, theatrical expectations have changed dramatically since the pandemic, which altered moviegoers’ habits and trained many to wait and watch films at home. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” also stems from a streaming series and does not continue the story line of the traditional “Star Wars” saga films that follow the Skywalker family. (The movie’s reported production budget of $166 million also makes it cheaper than its predecessors.)

And for Disney, box-office revenue will not be the only indicator of this film’s success.

The company expects the movie will boost other parts of its business, including streaming, its gaming collaboration with Fortnite and the all-important theme parks, where the film’s main characters appear at the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge-themed land, and the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride has been overlaid with a “Mandalorian and Grogu” storyline.

Then of course, there’s merchandise. (Famously, fans rushed to buy items of Grogu — known colloquially as Baby Yoda — after “The Mandalorian” show debuted in 2019, though products didn’t arrive for months. Once available, 13 million Grogu toys were sold in the two years after they were released, Disney has said.)

“It’s not using cinema in the way ‘Star Wars’ used cinema before,” said Carmelo Esterrich, a professor at the school of communication and culture at Columbia College Chicago, who has written about how “Star Wars” is a reflection of American culture. “It’s using the franchise of television and the power machine of Grogu to bring it to the big screen.”

Grogu’s appeal highlights an important goal for the franchise: expanding beyond its original fan base to new audiences. Although “The Mandalorian and Grogu” builds on storylines from the streaming show, the film was designed to be accessible to viewers who had never watched it.

“I hope that our excitement and joy and love of ‘Star Wars’ translates to a new generation of fans seeing it, experiencing it the way we did for a long time,” director Jon Favreau told an audience in April at the CinemaCon trade conference during a presentation about Disney’s film lineup.

Early ticket sale tracking indicated strong interest from older men, who have historically been the core audience for “Star Wars” films. But after an extensive marketing campaign, Disney’s studio estimates now show audiences are younger, with more families and women represented.

To date, “The Mandalorian” is still the most popular Disney+ series. The show, which has run for three seasons, has won 15 Emmys, including for sound mixing and special effects. The critical and fan response, as well as the opportunity to explore new characters’ backstories, led Lucasfilm to choose this show to spin off into a movie, according to sources close to the studio.

Since the launch of the platform in November 2019, “The Mandalorian” and other “Star Wars” titles such as “The Acolyte” and the second season of “Andor” have seen relatively high audience demand, according to an analysis by Parrot Analytics, a firm that tracks streaming data. Despite several big hits, the average demand for live-action television series set in the galaxy far, far away have shown a slight downward trend over time.

In contrast, demand for live-action series from Disney-owned Marvel Studios has held stable since the premiere of its first streaming show, “WandaVision.” Though Marvel’s television offerings outnumber those of “Star Wars,” overall audience interest in the superhero shows is less than the biggest “Star Wars” hits and more comparable to some of Lucasfilm’s lesser-hyped titles, including “Skeleton Crew,” according to Parrot Analytics.

In the end, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” needs to keep audience interest in “Star Wars” on the big screen. Next year, Lucasfilm will release “Star Wars: Starfighter,” a film starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy of “Deadpool & Wolverine” that has generated great interest, particularly given Gosling’s turn in “Project Hail Mary.”

“This is a safe reentry point,” Bock of Exhibitor Relations said of “The Mandalorian” movie. “If Grogu can bring in the families and if ‘The Mandalorian’ continues to bring in the audiences of the old movies, maybe they can bridge these generations like classic ‘Star Wars’ once did.”