“The Mandalorian and Grogu” dropped out of the top 5 at the box office in its third week of release
I have a bad feeling. By the end of its third weekend at the US box office, The Mandalorian and Grogu had already dropped to 6th place, once again behind the feature film based on the YouTube sensation, The Amazing Digital Circus.
John Favreau's film showed again a sharp drop in box office receipts compared to the previous week - by 61 percent (vs. 70 percent last week). It was surpassed by new releases Scary Movie (No. 1, approximately $25 million) and Masters of the Universe (No. 2, $30 million). At this rate, it looks likeThe Mandalorian and Grogucould become the firstStar Wars movieto fail to cross the $200 million mark at the U.S. box office (it currently sits at $155 million), and may not even catch Solo's $400 million worldwide rental So far he is about to reach the mark of $300 million.
The total cost of the film, including marketing and production budgets, is about $300 million, meaning that after subtracting the theatrical cut, the film will likely lose tens of millions. This is likely raising alarm bells within Disney, who may cover up the losses by claiming that the film was just an experiment, or that real success will come with the release ofStarfighternext year. They also argue that this will always be a difficult task since the film has already established itself on streaming platforms rather than in theaters.
But no one actually greenlit a Star Wars movie thinking they would lose money. They took on the project because they believed it was their best chance to get the film into theaters and make good money promoting it through Grogu - all while being aware of the potential difficulties.However, they did not expect so many projects to appear on YouTube.
Now the question becomes: what will Disney and Lucasfilm learn from this? Will they wait another 12 months until
Starfighter becomes a real test, or will they overreact (as they have in the past) and start canceling projects? The next few months will be very revealing. And that's not all: we're only in the first half of Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan's first year as presidents of Lucasfilm.