• Jon Favreau says he’s not entirely sure why The Mandalorian and Grogu was chosen as the first Star Wars film in seven years
• He believes Grogu’s massive cultural footprint — “Baby Yoda was everywhere” — is a major factor
• Favreau sees the film as an opportunity to bring Star Wars to a whole new audience
• Co-star Jonny Coyne reveals Grogu’s puppeteers stay in character even between takes, channeling the Muppets tradition
• The Mandalorian and Grogu opens in theaters May 22

Seven years is a long time to wait for Star Wars on the big screen. And of all the projects that Lucasfilm has teased, announced, and quietly shelved over that stretch, the one that actually made it to theaters turned out to be something nobody quite saw coming — a movie built around a TV bounty hunter and a tiny green creature that broke the internet in 2019. Jon Favreau, the man directing The Mandalorian and Grogu, is still a little surprised himself.

“I’m not sure what, exactly, why we were asked to do this,” Favreau told GamesRadar in London. “I suspect it was because these are characters that people, even who hadn’t seen Star Wars, may be aware of, especially Grogu. Baby Yoda was everywhere.”

He’s not wrong. When The Mandalorian launched Disney+ back in November 2019, it was Grogu — then nicknamed Baby Yoda by a delighted internet — who became the show’s breakout star almost overnight. The memes, the merch, the cultural saturation: it was one of those rare pop culture moments where something genuinely transcended its fandom. And Favreau clearly believes that crossover power is exactly what Star Wars needs right now to recapture casual audiences.

“These are two characters that were used to launch Disney Plus, and we made no assumptions when the Mandalorian TV show came on that anybody had seen any Star Wars before,” he explained. “But we also wanted to make it feel authentic to Star Wars, and so the world that we created as the backdrop and the way the characters present themselves were embraced by Star Wars fans, which I really appreciate. But it also was an inroad for people who may not have ever watched Star Wars on television, and here we are now, seven years after the last film. I think there’s an opportunity to present Star Wars to a new audience using these characters as well.”

The Weight of Bringing Star Wars Back to Theaters

This isn’t Favreau’s first time carrying the weight of a beloved franchise. He kicked off the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008’s Iron Man, a film that nobody was entirely sure would work and that changed Hollywood permanently. Now he’s in a roughly analogous position with Star Wars, and the pressure isn’t lost on him.

“I felt definitely responsibility, but more so to tell as good of a story as I could,” he said. “I find that, as a Star Wars fan myself, and across multiple genres that have strong fan bases, they really are invested in the story being good, and they want a great experience. And if you could deliver that to them, they reward you, but they want to make sure that you care as much as they do.”

That care, he says, shows up in the details — including some genuinely old-school filmmaking choices. Favreau mentioned bringing in Phil Tippett for stop-motion animation and John Goodson for miniature work, the kind of practical craft callbacks that Star Wars fans tend to go wild for. “We’re doing that because we’re excited by it, it’s fun for us,” he said, “and I think the story that surrounds the making of it is as much a part of the story as what you see on the screen.”

He also spoke to how deliberately the film is structured to work on two levels — accessible to first-timers, rewarding for diehards. “Star Wars fans are very perceptive, and so you can be very subtle in the messages that you send,” he said. “Part of the Star Wars community is that they communicate among one another. There’s a lot of speculation. There’s a lot of filling in the blanks for one another. So, you don’t have to lay everything out deliberately in a way that’s overly obvious.”

On Set, Grogu Never Really Clocks Out

One of the film’s co-stars, Jonny Coyne — who plays the mysterious Lord Janu and is known for his work on The Blacklist — stayed tight-lipped about plot details when speaking to CinemaBlend, but he had plenty to say about what it’s actually like sharing a set with Grogu. And it turns out the puppeteers behind the character bring a level of commitment that would impress even the most dedicated Muppets performer.

Coyne described how the team operating Grogu stays in character between takes — keeping the little guy “alive” even when the cameras aren’t rolling. It’s a philosophy straight out of the Jim Henson playbook, and it’s not entirely a coincidence. Yoda, Grogu’s species-mate and spiritual predecessor, was originally voiced and co-performed by Frank Oz, the legend behind Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal. The Henson Company’s DNA runs deep in this corner of the galaxy.

Coyne also noted that unlike actual babies (unpredictable, often uncooperative) or animals (famously difficult on set), Grogu manages to be the best of both — small, cute, and always ready for his close-up. “Babies can be whiny, fussy, hungry,” the logic goes, but a 50-year-old creature who looks like an infant? Apparently that’s the sweet spot.

It’s a small behind-the-scenes detail, but it says something about the care being put into this production — the same care Favreau keeps coming back to when he talks about what makes Star Wars fans tick.

The Mandalorian and Grogu opens in theaters May 22.

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• The Mandalorian & Grogu opens in theaters May 22, 2026 — the first Star Wars film since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019
• New marketing is heavily implying Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin might not survive the movie
• The film is tracking for an $80M+ opening weekend, which would be the lowest debut of the Disney-era Star Wars films
• Fan event screenings of the first 25 minutes have drawn overwhelmingly positive early reactions
• A prequel graphic novel, Danger in the Dark, is already confirmed for July 2026 — keeping the duo’s story going post-film

The marketing machine for The Mandalorian & Grogu has officially shifted into overdrive, and the latest promo just did something the franchise hasn’t really dared to do before — put a blaster to Pedro Pascal’s head and ask audiences: what if beskar boy doesn’t make it out?

It’s a classic Hollywood move, threatening a beloved character’s life to get people into seats. But what makes this moment different is that it’s actually raising a question worth answering. What if The Mandalorian & Grogu pulled the trigger on Din Djarin for real?

Before you close the tab — hear this out.

Why Din Djarin Is the Only Character They Could Threaten

Think about the math here. Grogu is Disney’s $600 animatronic cash cow. There is a zero percent chance Lucasfilm lets anything happen to him. Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward is a brand-new character audiences haven’t bonded with yet, so threatening her in a trailer lands with a thud. And Zeb — beloved as he is to Rebels fans — is effectively unknown to the mainstream moviegoing crowd this film is courting. Din is the only name on the marquee whose death would mean something.

There’s already been a seed planted in the trailers: a quiet moment where Din ruminates on the fact that Grogu, ancient and Force-sensitive, will almost certainly outlive him. It’s the most emotionally resonant thread the marketing has offered, and it hints that the film might actually be willing to go somewhere real with these characters.

Director Jon Favreau has described The Mandalorian & Grogu as a family adventure — and yes, killing a father figure in a family film feels rough. The Force Awakens comparison is obvious. But Han Solo’s death didn’t leave a child-presenting character orphaned in quite the same way losing Din would orphan Grogu, which makes the stakes feel genuinely different here.

Three Seasons of Dropped Threads

Here’s the honest problem: the TV show never quite figured out what to do with Din Djarin beyond his bond with Grogu, and it kept dropping the interesting stuff.

The revelation that his covert descended from Death Watch? Gone almost as quickly as it arrived. His decision to remove his helmet at the end of Season 2 — a genuinely brave character moment — was essentially reversed when Season 3 had him decide it was wrong to do that in the first place. The Darksaber, which could have been a fascinating burden for Din to carry, got awkwardly handed off to Bo-Katan to serve her arc instead. Even his identity as a bounty hunter on the fringes of galactic law got muddied as the show kept pushing him toward heroism and New Republic alliance.

The result is that Din Djarin, one of the most visually iconic characters Star Wars has produced in years, has gradually been flattened into a very cool action figure. And action figures aren’t characters.

The movie is a genuine reset opportunity. Favreau and Lucasfilm are bringing these two into the theatrical spotlight for the first time, and the pressure to deliver something meaningful — not just fun — is real.

The Box Office Reality

The Mandalorian & Grogu is currently tracking to open around $80 million over Memorial Day weekend. For context: that would technically beat Solo‘s $103 million domestic opening as the lowest debut in the Disney-era franchise, though the tracking reflects a different kind of caution than outright disinterest. Star Wars’ theatrical reputation took genuine hits from Solo‘s bomb, the divisive reception to The Rise of Skywalker, and seven years of no theatrical releases at all.

What Lucasfilm needs right now isn’t necessarily a billion-dollar opening — it needs audiences to walk out of the theater trusting Star Wars again. That’s why Favreau was the right call to direct. His last two Disney films, The Jungle Book (2016) and The Lion King (2019), were both critical and commercial wins. He built The Mandalorian into the franchise’s most beloved modern property. If anyone can make this landing, it’s him.

And the early signs are genuinely encouraging. Fan event screenings of the film’s first 25 minutes — shown to journalists, critics, and fans across the globe this week — have drawn overwhelmingly positive reactions. By all accounts, the opening act hits the ground running, with Din and Grogu diving straight into the aftermath of the fallen Empire and its scattered Imperial Remnants. The social media embargo lifts May 14, with full reviews to follow on May 19.

What Comes After

Whatever happens to Din Djarin on May 22, Lucasfilm has already made one thing clear: the story doesn’t end there. The Mandalorian & Grogu: Danger in the Dark, an original graphic novel from Mad Cave Studios’ Papercutz imprint, is set for release on July 22 — making it the first confirmed Mando project to arrive after the film. Written by Delilah S. Dawson with art by Arianna Florean, the story is set after Season 3 and serves as a prequel to the movie, following Din and Grogu as they team up with a crew of Anzellans to defuse a crashed pirate ship in the lava tubes of Nevarro. It’s also notably the duo’s first original comic story published outside of Marvel Comics.

So even if the film does something drastic with Din, the expanded universe is clearly not done with this corner of the galaxy.

But that’s almost beside the point. The real question The Mandalorian & Grogu has to answer isn’t whether Din lives or dies — it’s whether the movie is finally willing to commit to who he actually is. Three seasons of abandoned arcs and reassigned weapons have left him more symbol than person. The theatrical stage, with Favreau behind the camera and the weight of Star Wars’ big-screen future on the line, is exactly the moment to fix that.

If it doesn’t? Then maybe the blaster in that promo isn’t just marketing after all.

The post Should Din Djarin Die in The Mandalorian & Grogu? appeared first on Cream.

• Fans and influencers screened the first 25 minutes of The Mandalorian and Grogu in IMAX on May the 4th
• Reactions were largely positive, with particular praise for the action sequences and Ludwig Göransson’s score
• The most common critique: the film feels more like elevated TV than a true big-screen Star Wars epic
• Most footage shown in trailers and clips comes from these opening minutes, suggesting big surprises still lie ahead
• The film — the first Star Wars theatrical release in seven years — opens May 22, 2026

Star Wars is back in theaters for the first time since 2019, and on May the 4th, a select group of fans got to see what that actually looks like. The Mandalorian and Grogu screened its first 25-plus minutes at IMAX theaters around the world Monday night, and the early word from those lucky enough to be in those seats is — cautiously, enthusiastically — good.

The fan events, held at 7 p.m. local time with poster giveaways included, were sold out in major markets like New York, Texas, and California almost immediately. Those who couldn’t score tickets could catch a three-and-a-half-minute special look on Disney+, but the people inside those IMAX houses had something much more substantial to chew on.

And they’ve been talking ever since.

What Fans Actually Saw

The footage covers the film’s opening sequence — a snow-bound action scene that’s been teased across trailers, press screenings, and CinemaCon — but now seen in full, at scale, the way director Jon Favreau intended it to be experienced. Din Djarin and Grogu mount an AT-RT and careen downhill past a barrage of AT-ATs controlled by an unnamed Imperial warlord. It’s chaotic, kinetic, and — in IMAX — enormous.

The 25 minutes also introduce the Hutts as major players and give audiences their first real look at Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward, a New Republic leader and former Rebel Alliance pilot. Jeremy Allen White voices Rotta the Hutt — son of the late Jabba — and the mission structure is now clearer: Din and Grogu have been enlisted by the New Republic to rescue Rotta in exchange for information on a mystery target.

Also confirmed in the cast: Matthew Willig as Hogsbreth, and — in a genuinely unexpected piece of trivia — Martin Scorsese as an Ardennian shopkeeper named Hugo.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1bNF7SHtzVI%3Fsi%3DhJ248sMAJXUIELlF

The Reactions: Mostly Thrilled, With One Big Caveat

The consensus from fans and influencers who attended? The opening is a blast — particularly in IMAX, where the aspect ratio expands to the full 1.43 and Ludwig Göransson’s score fills the room. Multiple attendees specifically called out the sound design and music as highlights.

“Cinematic, epic scale that demands to be seen on the big screen,” one attendee wrote on social media. “Ludwig Göransson’s music gave us goosebumps. Had smiles on our faces the entire time.”

Critic Zach Pope called it “very entertaining,” saying it “reminds me a lot of the 1st season + the OG Star Wars trilogy in terms of story structure & feel. Action is MASSIVE, the Hutts have a huge part, & I can’t wait to see the rest!”

Star Wars podcaster William Devereux was equally enthusiastic about the two leads. “Din Djarin is arguably the coolest he’s ever been, and Grogu is as adorable as always,” he wrote. “While the movie’s stakes aren’t the highest, a lot of what the trailers show is from early in the film. So hopefully we’ll get some fun surprises. I love this duo and can’t wait for May 22nd!”

One fan summed up the Pedro Pascal energy perfectly: “Mando is still basically Star Wars John Wick and isn’t aiming for the leg when taking out bad guys.”

But the most consistent note — the one that keeps appearing in reaction after reaction — is that the film, at least in its opening stretch, feels like very good television rather than a proper cinematic event. Film reviewer Tyler Disney put it plainly: “The opening scene deserves credit, it’s genuinely cool. The CGI still needs some polish, but if the film keeps that momentum, it could easily turn into a hit. I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it, but something felt off when the opening credits rolled — it didn’t quite feel like a Star Wars movie. It came across more like a streaming TV film than a big-screen experience.”

Another attendee echoed that ambivalence but landed in a warmer place: “So, in many ways, these 25 minutes feel like an exciting premiere of a big streaming TV series, one that provides some big setpieces and tees up an exciting season of adventures. The Mandalorian and Grogu is on the big screen — on IMAX, no less, the biggest screens. That gives everything an extra sense of importance, scale, and excitement. This might not be a return to a Star Wars movie from the old days, but the scale is certainly there.”

Given that the movie literally grew out of a TV show — Favreau has confirmed it was originally conceived as Season 4 of The Mandalorian before the 2023 writers’ strike pushed him to rethink it as a feature — that critique is probably unavoidable. What matters is whether the second and third acts deliver something the show never could.

What’s Being Hidden — and Why That’s Actually Exciting

Here’s the thing that has fans most intrigued: nearly everything Disney has shown publicly — trailers, TV spots, the clips that ran at CinemaCon and on Good Morning America, the footage screened Monday night — appears to come from the film’s first 25 minutes or so. That’s a very deliberate choice.

It’s also very on-brand for Favreau. When The Mandalorian first premiered on Disney+ in 2019, he convinced the studio to keep Baby Yoda entirely out of the marketing until after the first episode dropped. That gamble paid off in a way few pop culture moments have in recent memory. The theory circulating now is that he’s pulling the same move at feature scale — with the Mando-Grogu-Rotta the Hutt trio at the center of an adventure that nobody outside the production has actually seen.

“A large piece of the movie is being hidden,” one analysis noted. “And we think it centers on Mando and Grogu teaming up with Rotta the Hutt for an adventure — all three of them together — and the filmmakers simply don’t want any of that to get out.”

For spoiler-averse fans, that’s genuinely exciting. There are reportedly around 110 minutes of film that the public has seen essentially nothing of.

The Bigger Picture: Star Wars Needs This to Work

The enthusiasm from Monday’s screenings matters more than usual because the box office tracking for The Mandalorian and Grogu hasn’t been spectacular. Current projections have the film opening to around $80–85 million domestically over Memorial Day weekend — a decent number in isolation, but one that draws uncomfortable comparisons to Solo: A Star Wars Story, whose 2018 underperformance effectively shut down Lucasfilm’s standalone movie ambitions for years.

On the critical side, prediction markets currently have the film landing around a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes — solidly Fresh, just shy of the 75% needed for Certified Fresh. That would put it above Solo‘s 69% but well below Rogue One‘s 84%, which remains the gold standard for non-Skywalker Saga Star Wars films.

Nielsen data released this week offered some context for the franchise’s current cultural footprint: U.S. viewers consumed 33 billion minutes — 550 million hours — of Star Wars content in 2025. A New Hope led all titles, followed by The Phantom Menace and Rogue One. On the TV side, Andor topped the list, followed by Skeleton Crew and The Mandalorian. The appetite is clearly there. The question is whether audiences who’ve been burned by recent Star Wars entries will show up opening weekend.

Favreau, for his part, has been direct about what he’s trying to do. “Even though in our hearts we are Star Wars fans, we make it for Star Wars fans, and we know that there’s a certain set of expectations around what Star Wars should be,” he told the Associated Press. “There is the responsibility to invite a whole new generation of people into Star Wars. That means that if a Star Wars fan brings somebody who’s not, they’ve got to have as good of a time as the fans do. I want to make the next generation feel the way about Star Wars that I did when I saw it for the first time.”

Sigourney Weaver, who saw the original Star Wars just before her own career took off, put it in personal terms during a recent interview. “I was looking at three lucky actors who’d made it to the big time and were in this glorious thing,” she recalled. “I hope I get that lucky someday to be in a movie that has people crowded into a theater all cheering for it.”

Based on Monday night’s reactions, at least, there’s reason to think she might get her wish. One fan summed up the feeling as simply as anyone: “I got some of the old Star Wars feelings back. For me, it’s nice to be back in a galaxy far, far away with characters I enjoy.”

The Mandalorian and Grogu opens in theaters — and IMAX — on May 22.

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