“The Mandalorian and Grogu” lost nearly all of its opening-weekend momentum in its second frame, falling 70% to about $25 million from Friday to Sunday and sliding from first place to third at the box office. The Disney and Lucasfilm release, which opened with $81.7 million, was overtaken by two far cheaper films that turned the weekend into a sharper rebuke than the studio likely expected.
That is why the Mandalorian and Grogu box office numbers are drawing such close attention now: the movie did not just dip, it gave back a huge share of its audience almost immediately. Pedro Pascal was among the stars at the Los Angeles world premiere on May 14, 2026, but the size of the opening did not translate into staying power once moviegoers had a second chance to choose something else.
“Backrooms” led the weekend with $81.4 million in its first frame, powered by a $10 million horror film from 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons. “Obsession” followed with an estimated $26.4 million, an even more striking result given its roughly $750,000 production budget and the fact that it was directed by Curry Barker, a 26-year-old who built an audience on YouTube and TikTok. Together, the two films made “The Mandalorian and Grogu” look less like a box-office juggernaut than a high-cost title with a steep drop in demand.
The first weekend had already hinted at trouble. The $81.7 million opening landed on the low end of expectations, and the long Memorial Day weekend gross fell well short of “Solo,” leaving Disney with a result that could mean a small loss or at least a struggle to reach theatrical break-even on a film budgeted around $175 million. That matters because the movie was supposed to anchor a new chapter for Star Wars on the big screen, the first Star Wars film of the 2020s.
The friction is not just the size of the decline. It is what the decline says about the audience’s appetite for the franchise after years in which “The Force Awakens” became the highest-grossing movie in domestic U.S. box office history, not adjusted for inflation, and later sequels sparked complaints about uneven planning. This time, the opening was not enough to shield the film from a hard second-weekend verdict, and the studio now has to see whether the run can recover enough to avoid looking like a costly near miss.
For Disney, Lucasfilm and the wider Star Wars business, the unanswered question is no longer whether the film opened strongly. It is whether the money already in hand can carry “The Mandalorian and Grogu” to a theatrical result that justifies the spending, or whether the steep drop has already settled the matter.
