Disney’s latest Star Wars film took a hard hit in theaters this weekend. The Mandalorian and Grogu fell 69% in its second weekend and finished third at the box office, the steepest second-weekend drop ever for a Star Wars movie.
That kind of slide is why the film is drawing fresh attention now. It opened with the highest Rotten Tomatoes audience score in Disney Star Wars history, holding at 88% even after ten thousand plus more ratings were added, yet the crowd approval has not kept pace with ticket sales. For Dave Filoni, who helped build the stories and characters behind The Clone Wars and Rebels, the box office result lands as a sharp contrast to the fan response the movie has generated.
The competition adds another layer to the embarrassment. The Mandalorian and Grogu finished behind Backrooms and Obsession, two YouTuber-directed horror films made on a combined $11 million budget. The Star Wars film has already passed its lower-ish budget, but the financial picture is still cloudy because marketing and other costs can push a movie far beyond the number that gets quoted first. That is why the film may barely break even, and why some industry observers think it could wind up lower than Solo.
That gap between audience approval and commercial strength is the friction inside Disney Star Wars right now. The studio has spent years trying to turn newer characters into a durable theatrical draw, with results that have been uneven at best, and The Mandalorian and Grogu now sits in the same conversation as the projects that struggled to convert brand recognition into repeat business. The Acolyte was billed as a trial run for brand-new characters and bombed spectacularly, while Ahsoka is coming back for a second season three years after its first run. The wider pattern is hard to ignore: fans may show up to rate these projects highly, but they are not always returning in enough numbers to carry them.
For now, the next Star Wars movie the studio says is definitely coming is Starfighter with Ryan Gosling. After that, Dawn of the Jedi is being floated as the next step, focused on the origin of the order. Whether The Mandalorian and Grogu becomes a profitable win or a cautionary tale may depend on the final tally, but the second weekend has already made one thing clear: in Disney Star Wars, a strong audience score no longer guarantees a sturdy box office.
