Do you want the good news or the bad news first about The Mandalorian and Grogu?
The good news is that the movie has polled very well among audiences, with an 88% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That rating system is flawed, but it does seem notable that this movie has the highest audience score of any Star Wars movie since the original trilogy. Translation: the people watching The Mandalorian and Grogu tend to enjoy it.
Now for the bad news: people don’t really seem to be watching it. The Mandalorian and Grogu experienced a 69% drop at the box office during its second weekend, the biggest ever for a Star Wars movie. It made about $25 million domestic this weekend after $102 million in the opening weekend, which combined with the international box office puts the movie at $246 million globally. That’s not a great picture.
What you’ll read in the coming days are plenty of hit pieces about how this is a devastating hit for Star Wars, and almost all of them will be greatly exaggerated. (1) The Mandalorian and Grogu had a reported budget of $165 million (before the marketing push), much lower than other Disney era Star Wars films – making it far too early to pronounce this a flop. (2) The Mandalorian and Grogu was always ambitious, taking a property exclusive to Disney+ and putting it in theaters – meaning that the impact of the movie coming to the streaming service could be significant (The Mandalorian has been Disney’s flagship original series). (3) The Mandalorian and Grogu is a merchandising machine, with tons of Grogu memorabilia for sale. These promotional partnerships are expected to be significant, so much so that even if the movie doesn’t quite break even at the box office it could still be financially worthwhile. (4) And, well, The Mandalorian and Grogu wasn’t really supposed to be the next big thing in Star Wars charting the way forward anyway. This was a fun action/adventure movie with low stakes to softly re-introduce Star Wars on the big screen, ahead of Starfighter next year – which, set after the sequel trilogy, seems likely to begin determining the direction of theatrical adventures in the galaxy far, far away.
Because of all of that, I’m not overly concerned about the state of the box office for The Mandalorian and Grogu, except to say this: it was incredibly predictable. And that’s what is disappointing. When I look at such a big drop-off from the first weekend to the second, here’s how I interpret it: the die-hard Star Wars fans went out to see a new Star Wars movie opening weekend, while the movie failed to gain a lot of traction with general audiences. That is something that many people raised alarm bells about for months leading up to the movie. It’s something I’ve been pretty vocal about – not because I wanted the movie to fail, but precisely the opposite.
Let’s start here: Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni really hate revealing much of anything to casual audiences, choosing to use conventions to screen exclusive footage for those in attendance. That’s a break from the way Star Wars has historically been very embracing of the wider fanbase, using something like Celebration to kick off a fandom-wide excitement. Favreau and Filoni, hyper-sensitive to any semblance of spoilers, have a different philosophy. I’m in no position to opine whether that’s better or worse, but I can say that it does seem to put a ceiling on the hype leading up to a movie like this one. That was further exemplified with the first trailer, released last September, which was exceptionally sparse on any plot details. That’s a fine approach for an initial teaser, but the problem was that it fit into a larger pattern.
This became especially glaring during the Super Bowl. We knew that The Mandalorian and Grogu was going to be highlighted, but what wound up happening was a Budweiser-esque commercial with Mando, Grogu, and tauntauns. It was bizarre. Fun, sure. But it felt like Lucasfilm was incredibly out of touch with audiences, assuming that people would come just because it was Star Wars and just because “baby Yoda” was cute. I wrote at the time about how Lucasfilm’s marketing department seemed to be taking exactly the wrong approach, seemingly having learned nothing from the last decade.
By February – three months prior to the film’s release – we did not even know who the movie’s main villain was. Even within weeks of the movie’s release, I was asking: “does anyone have a clue what The Mandalorian and Grogu is even about?” Now, I tend to keep up with Star Wars news and rumors about as much as anyone; for me to be asking that question had me concerned about where casual audiences were. They surely had no clue about anything relating to the movie, except that it was another adventure featuring these two characters from the Disney+ series. Would that be enough? Lucasfilm was counting on it. And even when Jon Favreau premiered a new clip from the movie in late April, it looked incredibly low-budget and awkward. The scene actually played out much better in the actual movie than it looked in the clip, but still it was puzzling that this, of all clips, was the one they chose to release.
Here is the point: many, including myself, were sounding alarm bells surrounding a downright puzzling and ineffective marketing approach for The Mandalorian and Grogu. They picked it up considerably in the final month leading up, and I hoped that would prove effective. It doesn’t seem like it has been, at least not on a larger scale.
And this is why I was so adamant about it: we saw the same thing play out with Solo: A Star Wars Story. It was a box office disappointment, but I’m convinced that Disney and Lucasfilm leadership learned the wrong lessons from it. From then-Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy to then-Disney CEO Bob Iger, the lesson was that no one but Harrison Ford could play Han Solo, and that they were making too many Star Wars movies. But to me, it seemed like there were bigger issues than that: rushing a May release, five months after The Last Jedi, to compete with Avengers: Infinity War, wasn’t exactly setting it up well to succeed. But the biggest issue, to me, was the marketing. Here’s what I wrote at the time:
“And I think that it taught an important lesson: while the die-hard fans will watch anything regardless, other Star Wars fans will need more information to go on when it’s not a saga film or something closely connected to it. I think the assumption was, strangely, that if they just slapped the “Star Wars” label on something and showed a bunch of unrelated shots that really gave no idea for the movie, fans would come. That might have worked for the episodic films, but maybe not these spinoffs. That’s an important lesson for moving forward into an era where the saga films aren’t going to be the theatrical pillars any longer.”
I could have written the exact same thing for The Mandalorian and Grogu – in fact, I did write incredibly similar things leading up to the release of the film. I figured that, like Solo, the movie would be enjoyable enough; my concern was about whether enough people would come out to watch it in the first place. Let me say it another way: I saw very little that would be compelling to casual audiences to go see this movie. The die-hard Star Wars fans would come. Would the more casual audiences come? It’s impossible for me to put myself in those shoes entirely, but I saw nothing that would be all that attractive for those in that camp.
So my concern is that, if The Mandalorian and Grogu doesn’t turn out as well at the box office as hoped, Disney and Lucasfilm leadership will once again learn the wrong lessons. I know this is oversimplistic, but any lesson that doesn’t include a series examination of the marketing department and philosophy will fall short and just perpetuate the cycle. Right or wrong, the “Star Wars” brand has taken a bit of a cultural hit, whether because of criticism and dislike, internet debates, ‘oversaturation’ (whatever that even is), or a departure from known and beloved characters. There are still lots and lots of people who enjoy Star Wars. They will still come watch Star Wars in the theater. But just slapping “Star Wars” on a movie, revealing nothing else, and expecting people to show up in droves seems to be a holdover from a long-lost age. Unless they’re telling a story with clear appeal to the masses through already-beloved characters in the episodic films, Lucasfilm needs a far better approach to marketing Star Wars.
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