Star Wars Is Losing Younger Fans — Can It Survive?

The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives in theaters on May 22 carrying the full weight of a franchise in crisis — and the reviews aren’t helping.

When the critic embargo lifted Tuesday morning, the headlines were brutal. The Independent’s piece was headlined “Stick a fork in Star Wars. It’s done.” The Times of London asked, “Would someone please put Star Wars out of its misery?” Vulture called it “drab and stone-faced to a fault” with “lifeless performances that seem determined to lull us to sleep.” Even the more charitable takes weren’t exactly rallying cries — the New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski called it “an elongated and beefed-up episode of television” that’s “likable enough,” while Variety’s Owen Gleiberman settled on “nothing more (or less) than a couple of likable, diverting, semi-forgettable episodes jammed together.” IGN gave it a 5/10, writing that if you’re “looking for a Star Wars movie that thrills, surprises, challenges, or demonstrates a vested interest in seeing its characters grow and change… The Mandalorian and Grogu is not the way.”

That’s not what Disney needed to hear.

Box office tracking puts the film at $80–100 million domestically over the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend. For almost any other franchise, that’s a respectable number. For Star Wars — one of Hollywood’s most mythologized properties — it’s a stress test. Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian put it plainly: “It will be a stress test for the ‘Star Wars’ brand.”

The uncomfortable comparison is 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, which opened to $84 million over the same holiday weekend and ultimately became the first Star Wars film to lose money in theaters, finishing with $392 million globally against a nearly $300 million budget. The Mandalorian and Grogu has a far leaner $165 million production budget — the cheapest Star Wars film since Revenge of the Sith in 2005 — which meaningfully lowers the break-even point. But the optics of matching Solo’s opening number are hard to spin.

A Generation That Grew Up Without Star Wars in Theaters

The film is the first Star Wars theatrical release in six and a half years, since The Rise of Skywalker divided audiences and critics alike in December 2019. That gap means there’s a whole cohort of young kids who have never experienced a Star Wars movie opening weekend — which director Jon Favreau has said is very much on his mind. “I want to make the next generation feel the way about Star Wars that I did when I saw it for the first time,” he told the Associated Press.

It’s a noble goal. But industry analysts aren’t sure the current moment is the one that delivers it.

“There’s clearly interest in the brand,” said Eric Handler, senior media analyst at Roth Capital Partners. “But revenues for each film have gotten progressively lower. Star Wars isn’t resonating with younger moviegoers like it did for [older] generations.”

The numbers back him up. The Force Awakens, which relaunched the franchise in 2015, earned over $2 billion globally and remains the highest-grossing domestic release of all time at $936 million. The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker were both billion-dollar films — but each earned roughly half of what their predecessor did. The only post-Disney spinoff that truly worked was Rogue One, which crossed $1 billion in 2016. Since then, it’s been a slow bleed.

The challenge Favreau and Lucasfilm co-CEO Dave Filoni face with this film is a specific one: convincing the show’s streaming audience to actually get off the couch and buy a movie ticket. The Mandalorian was a genuine phenomenon when it launched on Disney+ in 2019 — Baby Yoda broke the internet, became a meme ecosystem unto itself, and turned Grogu into one of the most recognizable characters in pop culture. But streaming audiences and theatrical audiences don’t always overlap. Marvel has run into the same wall: last year’s Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts, both preceded by Disney+ series, underperformed at the box office despite built-in fan bases.

“The biggest challenge is whether the streaming audience converts into a theatrical audience,” said Shawn Robbins, Fandango’s director of movie analytics and founder of Box Office Theory. “If word of mouth is good, that’ll be the big X factor.”

There’s also the small matter of the show’s declining quality in its later seasons — ratings and reviews dipped noticeably by Season 3 of The Mandalorian, giving casual fans less incentive to stay invested heading into a theatrical continuation.

Grogu Merch Is Everywhere. Ticket Sales Are the Question.

What’s not in doubt is Grogu’s commercial appeal off-screen. The little green guy’s face is currently stamped on Bath & Body Works soaps, Nilla Wafers’ “Grogu Nilla Nummies,” Pop Mart blind boxes, and a line of green Schick razors, among other collaborations. As Robbins put it: “Grogu is going to be a merchandising monster.”

That’s the broader Star Wars reality — the franchise is a sprawling ecosystem of theme park attractions, toys, and licensing deals that generates enormous revenue regardless of whether any individual film hits. Analysts are quick to point out that box office performance, while important for optics, is only one corner of that universe.

Still, the marketing campaign for the film reportedly raised some internal eyebrows. One source told Page Six that a member of the marketing team expressed concern they hadn’t had enough time to screen the film and properly build a campaign around it. Promotion, the source noted, basically boiled down to: “Look how adorable Grogu is!” — which may explain why, in a recent Fandango survey asking thousands of moviegoers to name their top 10 most anticipated films of the summer, The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t make the list.

All Eyes on Starfighter

Inside Lucasfilm and among box office watchers, there’s a growing sense that the franchise’s real shot at revival isn’t this movie — it’s next summer’s Star Wars: Starfighter.

Directed by Shawn Levy, who brought enormous energy to Deadpool & Wolverine, and starring Ryan Gosling fresh off the success of Project Hail Mary, Starfighter is a standalone film set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker in a time period the franchise hasn’t explored yet. Levy has been emphatic that it’s a clean break. “It’s a new adventure,” he said at Star Wars Celebration 2025. “It’s set in a period of time that we haven’t seen explored yet.” No legacy characters, no Skywalker baggage, no sequel obligations.

Handler sees it clearly: “Disney needs something new and exciting to bring energy to the franchise. Ryan Gosling is as hot as can be right now. ‘Starfighter’ could be the way to go.”

For now, though, the focus is on this weekend. Dergarabedian is watching the second-week drop closely — a 55% decline would signal genuine audience engagement; a 70% freefall would tell a different story entirely. “There’s been just this feeling of disappointment and almost… not anger. But just very critical of the creative direction that Star Wars has taken over the past few years,” he said.

This is also, notably, the first major theatrical release in the post-Kathleen Kennedy era. Kennedy, who ran Lucasfilm for over two decades, stepped down earlier this year, with Filoni and Lynwen Brennan now at the helm. They have yet to reveal a broader roadmap for the franchise, though that could change at D23 in August or at next April’s Star Wars Celebration.

The Mandalorian and Grogu opens May 22. Star Wars: Starfighter is currently set for May 28, 2027.