LOS ANGELES – Disney’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu opened at the top of the domestic box office over Memorial Day weekend, marking the franchise’s first theatrical release in seven years and a critical test of whether a story born on streaming can carry the kind of audience that once defined the summer movie season.
The film, directed by Jon Favreau and starring Pedro Pascal as the bounty hunter Din Djarin, pulled in $33 million on its opening day from roughly 4,300 North American theaters, according to studio estimates. Industry analysts now project a three-day total between $81 million and $85 million and a four-day Memorial Day haul of $91 million to $100 million, comfortably ahead of Universal’s Michael, Lionsgate’s The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Paramount’s horror release Passenger.
For Lucasfilm and Disney, that ceiling matters less than what it proves. The Mandalorian and Grogu is the first live-action Star Wars film since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, a release that grossed $177 million in its domestic opening and went on to clear $1 billion worldwide. The new film was never expected to challenge those numbers. What its backers needed was a clean, profitable theatrical return after a half-decade in which Disney leaned heavily on series like The Mandalorian, Andor and Ahsoka to keep the brand alive on Disney+.
Built on a reported $165 million production budget, less than half what Solo: A Star Wars Story cost in 2018, the film is comfortably within reach of breaking even on its theatrical run before merchandising kicks in. A source close to the studio told The Hollywood Reporter the film needed to earn between $500 million and $600 million worldwide to break even, a threshold most analysts now see as achievable given the global rollout into roughly 98 percent of overseas markets. The only major territory holding back this weekend was South Korea.
Audience response was strong. CinemaScore polling gave the film an A-minus, the highest grade for a Star Wars feature since The Force Awakens, and exit surveys suggested the family demographic that powered the Disney+ series turned out in force. Pascal, who has spent six years voicing and inhabiting Din Djarin without often showing his face, also appears unmasked at key moments in the film, a creative pivot Favreau described in interviews as a response to the actor’s rise to Hollywood stardom through The Last of Us and other roles.
The supporting cast includes Sigourney Weaver as the New Republic officer Colonel Ward and Jeremy Allen White as Rotta the Hutt, with original music composed by Ludwig Göransson. The plot picks up after the events of The Mandalorian’s third Disney+ season, with Din Djarin and Grogu hired to rescue Rotta from a rival Hutt clan, a mission that propels the duo into the wider galaxy and reintroduces familiar Star Wars iconography like AT-AT walkers and Imperial holdouts. The runtime is two hours and 12 minutes, and the film carries a PG-13 rating.
Critics have been mixed but largely positive. Rotten Tomatoes posted a 64 percent critics score on opening day, well above the 51 percent that Rise of Skywalker drew at the same point, and audience approval sat in the high eighties. Reviews have praised Göransson’s score, the world-building expansions overseen by Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni and the chemistry between Pascal’s Mandalorian and the puppet-and-CGI Grogu. Negative notices have focused on a story that some reviewers found indistinguishable in tone from a longer episode of the Disney+ series.
The release sits inside a Hollywood theatrical landscape that has spent the past year searching for stability. Memorial Day weekend totals across all films are projected to land near $209 million, down roughly 37 percent from last year’s record holiday frame. That decline has put pressure on every major studio to deliver event films that can hold their screens for weeks, not just open large. Disney’s next big test, the live-action Moana, arrives in July, while Marvel Studios is counting on Avengers: Doomsday in December.
Beyond the weekend numbers, Lucasfilm has positioned The Mandalorian and Grogu as the start of a new theatrical pipeline. The studio has already announced Star Wars: Starfighter for May 2027, the franchise’s first non-Skywalker, non-Mandalorian theatrical entry in nearly a decade, with additional features in development. The strategy mirrors a wider Hollywood pivot toward known franchises in which streaming-tested intellectual property is graduated to theatrical events, a model Disney has tested previously with its Marvel Cinematic Universe and is now applying to its broader content strategy, including its partnership with artificial intelligence developers.
Comparisons to Solo, the only previous Star Wars feature to open on Memorial Day weekend, are inevitable. That 2018 film debuted to $103 million over four days and ended its global run at $392 million, becoming the only entry in the modern Star Wars era to lose money. The Mandalorian and Grogu’s lower budget, stronger CinemaScore and broader family appeal should keep it on the right side of that ledger, but the franchise’s longer-term recovery will depend on whether the film holds its audience through June and into the early summer corridor.
Merchandising remains a meaningful tailwind. Star Wars consistently ranks among the top five global toy properties, with retail sales exceeding $1 billion annually, and Grogu toys alone have sold more than 13 million units since the Disney+ series debuted in 2019. Burger King partnered with Disney on a promotional tie-in for the film, and major retailers including Target and Walmart have leaned heavily into Grogu plush and Din Djarin action figure assortments for the holiday weekend.
The crowded Memorial Day slate also delivered a notable surprise. Focus Features and Blumhouse’s Obsession, directed by Curry Barker, is on track to grow in its second weekend, an unusual feat for a wide release. The horror film opened to $17.2 million last weekend and now projects to add nearly $20 million over the three-day frame, putting it on a clear path to $55 million domestically before the holiday is out. Other newcomers had a harder time. Recent box office winners like The Devil Wears Prada 2 are expected to settle in third place, while Passenger and Neon’s I Love Boosters are battling for fifth.
For Pedro Pascal, the weekend caps a year that has already included The Fantastic Four: First Steps for Marvel and major roles across television and prestige film. Sigourney Weaver, returning to a space epic for the first time in years, has used the press tour to draw comparisons between Colonel Ward and her Aliens character Ellen Ripley, framing Ward as a colder, bureaucratic counterpart to the freewheeling Mandalorian. Jon Favreau, whose last two Disney directorial efforts on The Lion King and The Jungle Book grossed a combined $2.6 billion globally, will continue overseeing the Mandalorian corner of Lucasfilm as the studio expands.
Industry forecasters expect the global opening, including the domestic weekend, to land in the $160 million range, with about half coming from overseas. According to early reporting by Variety, the film’s strongest international markets in its first 24 hours were the United Kingdom, Mexico and Australia, suggesting that the Disney+ audience built over the past six years has translated into theatrical demand outside of North America. The full Memorial Day numbers, including final Monday grosses, are expected to be reported by Disney on Tuesday.
According to further reporting by Deadline, Lucasfilm and Disney executives are already in early discussions about a direct sequel that would keep Favreau attached and continue the Pascal-led storyline, contingent on the film’s second-weekend hold and overseas legs. Whether or not the franchise has fully recovered the box office dominance it once held, the message from this weekend is clear. Star Wars, after a long pause, is back in theaters, and the audience showed up to meet it.
