The Mandalorian and Grogu

Lucasfilm

The vibes around The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first Star Wars project back in theaters since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, have always been a bit odd, even when it was just first announced. Now? Disney seems to have really gone astray here in terms of generating hype for the film.

I had to do a bit of a double-take when I saw this, but a new Fandango survey, the big ticket-seller, surveyed its audience to find the most-anticipated movies of the summer. The Mandalorian and Grogu isn’t on the list at all, and there are some surprising entries that did land there, coming in above it. Here’s the list

1. Toy Story 5
2. Spider-Man: Brand new Day
3. The Devil Wears Prada 2
4. The Odyssey
5. Scary Movie
6. Moana
7. Minions and Monsters
8. Mortal Kombat II
9. Supergirl
10. Insidious: Out of the Further

Yes, you’re reading that correctly. The first new Star Wars movie in six years is less-anticipated than Scary Movie, Mortal Kombat II and the sixth Insidious movie. And before you say, “well, it’s a spring movie, it wouldn’t be on here,” The Mandalorian and Grogu is out May 22, but The Devil Wears Prada 2 is out May 1 and Mortal Kombat II is May 8. It counts.

I’ve spoken about this previously based on tepid reception to its trailers, which have far fewer views overall than essentially all of the previous Star Wars movies in the Disney era. It had that bizarre Budweiser parody Super Bowl spot this year. Supposedly, it did not exactly wow anyone with its recent CinemaCon presence either.

The issues seem pretty obvious here:

1) Star Wars is not in a very good spot. Disney packed it in after Rise of Skywalker, as its latest sub-film, Solo, did not do great. They switched almost entirely to Disney Plus, which resulted in a series of very expensive, but underwhelming shows that almost all ended after a single season. The lone bright spot, of course, being Andor.

2) Another well-liked show used to be The Mandalorian, at least through most of its first two seasons, but then it went to a weird place, jamming in two Mando episodes to the awful Book of Boba Fett, then arriving with a bad season 3 three years ago in March 2023, and that’s the last time we saw. Now, it’s returning for what is more or less the replacement for season 4, needing to keep continuity but also be a “fresh start” so people can jump in without watching three seasons of the show as a prerequisite. But even those that have are generally not thrilled about waiting three years for a movie that is four episodes jammed together.

It’s easy to imagine that The Mandalorian and Grogu is not going to tear up the box office compared to the last era of Disney movies. The worldwide box office for the last 4 out of 5 Star Movies, the new trilogy and Rogue One, were all over a billion dollars. Its competition is more likely to be Solo, which ended its run at $393 million, sounding alarm bells at Disney. I think Mando would be more than that, but at this point, who knows. We’ll find out in a month.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.