There’s still an appetite among theatergoers for new Star Wars movies, albeit not as big as it once was.
The Mandalorian and Grogu debuted with $102 million at the domestic box office through Monday, Variety reports. While it’s a respectable start for the movie, which was produced on a lower budget than all of the post-Disney Star Wars feature films, it’s actually the lowest opening for a Star Wars movie since Disney took control of the franchise.
That distinction was previously held by the 2018 standalone movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story. That movie opened to $103 million through the Memorial Day holiday, unadjusted for inflation, but it also was produced on a considerably bigger budget of approximately $300 million. Solo was the first-ever box-office bomb in the Star Wars franchise, but was followed a year later with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which grossed over a billion dollars worldwide.
The Mandalorian and Grogu, which stars Pedro Pascal reprising his role from the Disney+ series, will need to perform strongly during its second weekend to prove its legs, but it already has positive audience scores, indicating that fans are on board. As the first Star Wars movie to release in theaters after the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s proven that there’s still interest in the franchise even if the last two movies, Solo and Rise of Skywalker, received a tepid response from fans and critics.
Since 2019, Disney has focused on producing Disney+ shows set in the Star Wars universe to varying degrees of success. The Mandalorian was the first Disney-produced live-action Star Wars series and immediately became a big hit, while other shows such as The Book of Boba Fett and The Acolyte got a more mixed reception. Andor, which had its second and final season last year, also proved to be an enormous critical success for Disney and is often regarded among the best Star Wars has to offer.
The other major story of the Memorial Day weekend box office is the surprise horror hit Obsession, which scored $22 million in its second weekend of release, bringing its domestic total to $58.5 million. It was produced on a budget of approximately $1 million and has since generated $74 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable movies of the year.
