Mando’s big-screen launch sputtered out at the box office with just $177.7 million domestically, but there’s still a path for Star Wars to pull him out of the wreckage. The Pedro Pascal-led franchise finally returned to theaters earlier this year with its first new movie since 2019, and Lucasfilm did something it had never done before. Instead of building off a past film or doing something original, the studio spun off the Disney+ series The Mandalorian into a theatrical adventure, which is in line with the state of Star Wars in the 2020s. The Mandalorian & Grogu, of course, happened in place of the show’s Season 4, which could still be on the table, but it’s a rocky road after the movie finished as the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars film ever.
The Mandalorian & Grogu set all the wrong records by earning less than $200 million at the domestic box office, ultimately totaling $345.6 million worldwide. In the U.S. and Canada, it’s only the 11th-highest-grossing film of 2026 so far, outgrossed by lower-budget films like Obsession, Backrooms, and fellow Disney May release The Devil Wears Prada 2.
Its ranking will only go down, too, with The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Dune: Part Three, Avengers: Doomsday, and Jumanji: Open World all expected to outgross it after they release later this year.
Its budget was a reported $165 million, which is actually on the low end for Star Wars films and the movie’s financial saving grace. Compare that to Solo: A Star Wars Story, which earned $392.9 million but had a ballooned budget of more than $275 million, certainly losing the studio money back in 2018.
Still, even with its leaner price tag, The Mandalorian & Grogu isn’t expected to have made the studio any money from its run in theaters. Many believe it needed $500 to $600 million worldwide to turn a profit, and it missed even the low end of that range significantly. The company even admitted in a shareholder letter that the movie “underperformed our box office expectations.”
What’s wild, after all this, is that a Season 4 of The Mandalorian could still play pretty well. The movie wasn’t a closing chapter for Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu, so their future stories seem totally open.
It does seem like Star Wars is moving away from the MandoVerse once Ahsoka Season 2 debuts in January 2027. But Grogu is still a huge new character in Star Wars, and generally speaking, there’s still a lot of love for these characters despite their movie’s lackluster box office. This franchise-within-a-franchise just might be best suited for streaming, where it got its name.
With all that in mind, the best way to save Pedro Pascal’s Mandalorian might be giving him and Grogu one last hurrah. The movie left the duo in an open-ended spot, and finally getting the long-teased MandoVerse crossover in some form would help give these characters some closure. The real question is what form that takes, and what kind of financial risk Lucasfilm is willing to take with these Disney+ characters.
Dave Filoni’s crossover film, meant to tie together The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka on the big screen, was reportedly put on the back burner earlier this year. After this box office run, putting out another big-budget movie with these characters would be an unneeded gamble. General audiences rejected the lightspeed jump from Disney+ to theaters.
Lucasfilm’s film side is also moving back to stories that aren’t tied to streaming, or even past characters at all, with next year’s Star Wars: Starfighter and Jon Watts’ Episode X.
A Season 4 or miniseries is a much safer play for Filoni and Lucasfilm, with no box office numbers to create negative headlines. That’s why The Mandalorian Season 4 actually seems much more likely than Filoni’s crossover movie ever happening.
Disney still might want another live-action Star Wars series, too, and none are known to be in active development beyond Ahsoka Season 2. It was even reported back in January that the crossover would be reworked into a limited series if The Mandalorian & Grogu flopped.
Potentially the most effective way to close out the MandoVerse would be Season 4 of The Mandalorian with crossover characters, or even a streaming, one-off movie straight to Disney+. After all these years, with the highs of The Mandalorian Seasons 1 and 2, it would be sad to see these characters never return in some form or fashion.
If Star Wars never makes another MandoVerse-era project, which seems possible with nothing Mandalorian-focused in the works, that doesn’t have to be the end for Grogu.
He’s the same species as Yoda, who lived to be 900, and as Din himself says in The Mandalorian & Grogu, “The kid will live centuries beyond me.” That leaves the door open for an older Grogu to show up much later on the timeline, like beginning in Episode X, or another post-The Rise of Skywalkerstory.
The Mandalorian & Grogu director Jon Favreau has big plans for the character, too, telling GamesRadar+ that Grogu is “on a path to be both a Jedi and a Mandalorian.”
Favreau also noted Grogu’s centuries-long lifespan and that he’s already making his own choices with a strong mentor in his corner, leaving plenty of room for new stories as he grows up. Seeing Grogu in the future as that kind of Mandalorian/Jedi mix could be really cool, and it’s a pretty logical place for his story to land.
Even with Din Djarin out of the picture, it could be a neat connection to see how the Mandalorian influences Grogu, and what kind of Force user he has become. The only part that Disney may not be on board with is that he would lose some of that “Baby Yoda” cuteness that sells so many toys and merchandise.
