• Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu opened to $98M domestic over the four-day Memorial Day weekend — the lowest opening in Star Wars theatrical history, below Solo‘s $103M in 2018
• Disney had projected $102M; worldwide gross reached $167M, nearly covering the $165M production budget in its first frame
• A24’s Backrooms pushed hard for No. 1, with a $40M+ debut that would rank as the studio’s highest-grossing opening ever
• Audiences on Rotten Tomatoes called it “a perfectly enjoyable low-stakes popcorn movie” — families, not franchise obsessives, drove the turnout
• The film stars Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin, with Jeremy Allen White and Sigourney Weaver in supporting roles, directed by Jon Favreau

The first Star Wars movie in seven years won the Memorial Day box office. It also posted the lowest opening in Star Wars theatrical history. Both things are true, and depending on who you ask, that’s either a crisis or exactly what Disney expected.

The final numbers for Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu came in at $98 million domestic for the four-day holiday weekend — $81 million for the traditional three-day — with a worldwide total of $167 million. Disney had projected a four-day domestic figure of $102 million on Sunday, revised slightly to $100 million by Monday evening. The actuals came in softer still.

The comparison that keeps surfacing is Solo: A Star Wars Story, which opened over Memorial Day 2018 to $103 million domestically and is widely remembered as the franchise’s most significant box office stumble. The Mandalorian and Grogu fell short of that. In terms of raw opening weekend numbers, it is now the worst-performing Star Wars film in the franchise’s theatrical history.

The Case for Not Panicking

The production budget was $165 million — modest by current blockbuster standards. The film covered it globally in its opening weekend, before accounting for marketing costs. That’s not a bomb. It’s also not the sequel trilogy, which was chasing different demographics entirely.

IndieWire made the most useful observation: “Families, Not Fanboys, Drove The Mandalorian and Grogu Box Office — and Disney Is Fine with That.” The film was never engineered for the Reddit-and-YouTube corner of the fanbase that dissected The Last Jedi frame by frame. It’s a family adventure about a space dad and his small green son, and families showed up for it.

Audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes reinforced that read. The consensus from viewers called it “a perfectly enjoyable low-stakes popcorn movie” that delivered on the relationship between Din Djarin and Grogu and “exciting action set pieces.” Nobody walked out angry. Nobody is writing think-pieces about betrayal.

Comicbook.com pushed back on the broader narrative, arguing that “what everyone is getting wrong about the box office” is the comparison itself — that The Mandalorian and Grogu was never competing against The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi. Those films drew audiences who grew up with the original trilogy and were hungry for a return. This film drew people who watch The Mandalorian on Disney+ and wanted to see it bigger. Those are different audiences with different behavior patterns.

The Backrooms Factor

The weekend’s other major story was A24’s Backrooms, the adaptation of internet horror creator Kane Parsons’ YouTube IP, which opened with an estimated $40 million or more — a figure that would represent the highest opening weekend in A24’s history. That a sub-$10 million horror film from a first-time narrative director effectively challenged a Star Wars movie at the Memorial Day box office is its own kind of story, and one that studios are going to be studying for a while.

Backrooms had the same weekend that The Mandalorian and Grogu was supposed to own. The fact that it didn’t is part of why the post-weekend discourse has been so loud.

What Comes Next

Jon Favreau directed and produced the film, with Pedro Pascal returning as Din Djarin alongside Jeremy Allen White and Sigourney Weaver. The film’s global run is just beginning — international markets will matter considerably for how the final numbers look by the time it leaves theaters.

The Ringer framed the weekend with the starkest possible take: “The Mandalorian and Grogu Is the End of Star Wars as We Know It.” Their podcast brought in Star Wars superfan Van Lathan to discuss who the movie was actually made for and whether it marks an end of an era for the franchise at large. It’s a reasonable question, even if the answer isn’t as clean as the headline suggests.

Star Wars last opened a movie in theaters in December 2019. Seven years later, the franchise came back with a family film that opened below expectations and still made its budget back in four days. Whether that’s a failure, a pivot, or just the new reality of a franchise that peaked a decade ago probably depends on how much you loved the sequel trilogy — and whether you have a kid who cried when Grogu showed up on the big screen.

The post The Mandalorian and Grogu Opened to a Series-Low $98M — Here’s Why Disney Isn’t Panicking appeared first on Cream.

• Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu hits theaters this weekend — the first Star Wars film in nearly seven years
• Pedro Pascal leads the film alongside Jeremy Allen White, Sigourney Weaver, and Martin Scorsese
• Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair — Tarantino’s original uncut vision — is now streaming on Peacock for the first time
• Prison drama Wasteman holds a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and is available to rent now
• Horror options include the van-set Passenger in theaters and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy on VOD

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It’s a genuinely stacked weekend at the movies — and at home. The biggest story is obviously Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, Disney’s first theatrical Star Wars release in nearly seven years and its first-ever attempt to adapt one of its Disney+ series into a feature film. But whether or not you’re feeling the Force this weekend, there’s plenty else to work with: a creepy van-horror movie made for packed Friday night crowds, a prison drama with a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, a Quentin Tarantino epic finally available to stream in its original form, and a Mummy reboot that has some genuinely nasty ideas — and some serious tonal problems.

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Here’s everything worth your time (and a few things that aren’t).

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Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu — In Theaters Now

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The Mandalorian and Grogu is set after the events of Return of the Jedi, with the evil Empire fallen and Imperial warlords still scattered across the galaxy. As the fledgling New Republic works to protect everything the Rebellion fought for, they enlist bounty hunter Din Djarin — played by Pedro Pascal — and his young apprentice Grogu, aka Baby Yoda. The plot involves rescuing Rotta the Hutt, the muscular outcast son of the late Jabba, who is voiced by The Bear star Jeremy Allen White. Sigourney Weaver and Martin Scorsese also co-star, and Iron Man director Jon Favreau is behind the camera.

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On paper, this should feel like an event. In practice, critics are decidedly split — and even the positive reviews aren’t exactly enthusiastic. Slate’s Sam Adams put it bluntly: \”If The Mandalorian and Grogu isn’t the worst Star Wars movie — and it might be — it’s certainly the least: the least essential, the least engaging, the least necessary.\” The Los Angeles Times’ Robert Abele was more generous, writing that \”across its many wordless scenes, it’s at heart a solidly rousing, delightfully icky creature feature, in the vein of a supercharged Ray Harryhausen-meets-Guillermo del Toro joint.\”

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The core criticism keeps coming back to the same thing: this is a feature-length TV episode, not a movie. The onscreen text setting up the story notably skips the iconic opening crawl — that’s reserved for entries with “Episode” in the title — and the film’s structure is repetitive in a way that works fine for binge-watching but doesn’t hold up on a big screen. Jeremy Allen White’s Jabba’s son character apparently gets a scene where he laments, essentially, \”Do you know how hard it is to be Jabba the Hutt’s son?\” — which is either charming or baffling depending on your tolerance for this kind of thing.

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The one genuine bright spot everyone agrees on: composer Ludwig Göransson, a three-time Oscar winner, delivers a score that does heavy lifting the rest of the film doesn’t. When the lead character is masked and Pedro Pascal’s vocal performance is running on limited fuel, Göransson’s music is doing the emotional work.

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The bigger picture here is hard to ignore. The Force Awakens is still the highest-grossing domestic release of all time. That was eleven years ago. Since then, Disney has released dozens of Star Wars shows — the only one that’s broken through culturally in any meaningful way is the Emmy-winning Andor — and a string of planned theatrical films that either fell apart or were quietly shelved, from the Lord & Miller situation on Solo to the abandoned trilogies and Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron. Filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and Damon Lindelof have spoken openly about Star Wars projects that didn’t come together. And the franchise’s big theatrical comeback is… a streaming show adaptation whose last season aired over three years ago.

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The Mandalorian and Grogu is rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action, and runs 132 minutes. Get tickets here.

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Passenger — Also in Theaters, and Worth Your Friday Night

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If Star Wars isn’t calling your name, the horror movie Passenger is genuinely fun — the kind of thing that’s best experienced in a full theater with a crowd that’s ready to scream.

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The setup is simple: a young couple (Lou Llobell and Jacob Scipio) witnesses a brutal highway accident and soon realizes they didn’t leave the crash scene alone. A demonic presence — think haunted house movie, but the house is a van — follows them into their #VanLife adventure. Melissa Leo also stars. Norwegian filmmaker André Øvredal directs, and while he hasn’t topped his debut The Autopsy of Jane Doe, this is his most entertaining work in years. The opening sequence in particular is a blast — casually funny, then suddenly tense, with a cut-to-title that apparently had opening-night crowds screaming with delight.

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The weak spots are real: whenever the film slows down for the couple to have earnest conversations about their relationship and ambitions, it drags. These characters are not deeply written. But the set pieces are well-constructed, the jumps land, and there’s nothing wrong with a movie that knows exactly what it is. IndieWire’s Alison Foreman praised Øvredal for being \”skilled at trapping his audience inside a disorienting, semi-liminal space where anything can happen,\” while The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee felt the film kept its audience at too much of a distance to fully work.

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It’s rated R for strong violent content, some gore, and language. Runs 94 minutes. Best seen with a full room. Tickets here.

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Wasteman — Rent This One Tonight

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The most quietly impressive release of the weekend isn’t in theaters at all. Wasteman is a tense, suffocating British prison drama that currently holds a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes — and earns every bit of it.

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The film is a two-hander: Taylor, newly paroled and hoping for a fresh start, finds his chances threatened when his new cellmate Dee takes him under his wing — and a vicious attack forces Taylor to choose between protecting Dee and protecting his own freedom. It’s a movie about how the prison system corrupts even those genuinely trying to do right within it, and what redemption can possibly look like in that environment.

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David Jonsson — who broke through with scene-stealing work in Alien: Romulus — and Tom Blyth, known from The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and the Netflix rom-com The People We Meet on Vacation, are both exceptional here. The Los Angeles Times’ Tim Grierson praised both performances, writing that Blyth \”hints at a whole universe inside his character simply by the way he quietly listens and observes.\” The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey added that Jonsson \”feels like he’s on the precipice of something major\” — which, watching this, is easy to believe.

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Wasteman is available to rent or buy now on Apple TV and Prime Video.

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Lee Cronin’s The Mummy — On VOD, With Caveats

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The marketing for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has leaned heavily on the director’s name — partly because Blumhouse has been busy on social media reminding everyone that Brendan Fraser is not in this one. (For the record: a fourth Mummy film with Fraser was recently greenlit, which explains the branding gymnastics.) Cronin, who directed Evil Dead Rise, gets top billing here as he attempts to put his own stamp on familiar IP.

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The premise is genuinely unnerving: a journalist’s young daughter vanishes into the desert, and eight years later, when she’s returned to her broken family, the reunion quickly becomes a nightmare as she begins to transform into something horrifying. That setup — particularly the stretch where the family must try to rebuild their lives after a devastating, unsolved disappearance — is harrowing in a way that works. And the film is impressively mean-spirited when it comes to its gore, including some sequences you likely haven’t seen before.

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The problem is tone. The film lurches between genuine trauma and gross-out comedy in ways that keep colliding, and by the time it pivots into familiar possession-movie territory, the tonal whiplash has worn out its welcome. The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee called it \”absurdly, watch-checkingly overlong, tonally unsure and, fatally, not all that scary,\” while TheWrap’s William Bibbiani was more forgiving, praising Cronin’s \”uncanny knack for human mutilation\” as practically a requirement for the genre.

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At 2 hours and 15 minutes, it tests your patience. But if you’re a horror completist, there’s enough here — particularly in the first act — to make it worth a rental. Available now on Apple TV and Prime Video.

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Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair — Stream It on Peacock

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This one’s been a long time coming. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair — Quentin Tarantino’s original, uncut vision of his fourth feature, uniting both volumes into a single nearly four-and-a-half-hour experience — is now streaming on Peacock for the first time, more than two decades after Harvey Weinstein persuaded Tarantino to split it into two films for commercial release.

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The film premiered at Cannes in 2006 and has been a cinephile obsession ever since — it plays regularly at Tarantino’s own Los Angeles theater, complete with French subtitles from that original festival print. This is the first time the full version has been available to a mainstream audience, and it’s everything fans of the film hoped it would be.

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The differences from the two-volume theatrical release are small but meaningful. The transition point between Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 now includes extended dialogue and loses a scene (and a limb). The climactic reveal — originally used as a hook to bring audiences back for the second film — lands where it was always meant to, in the final act. And the legendary \”House of Blue Leaves\” sequence, where the Bride faces the Crazy 88 in the famous black-and-white section, is now in full color and extended, including previously cut moments of maximum carnage. The animated O-Ren Ishii origin sequence has an extra scene, too, and it’s a good one.

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The most striking thing about watching it uninterrupted is Uma Thurman’s performance — commanding, physical, emotionally layered — which was completely overlooked by the Academy during both years the films were eligible. Had they been released as one, it’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t have been nominated. The film features one of the most expertly curated soundtracks of Tarantino’s career and some of the most kinetic filmmaking he’s ever done.

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WBUR’s Sean Burns summed it up perfectly: \”Kill Bill is electrifying, frustrating, revealing, impeccably crafted and about as thrillingly, embarrassingly self-indulgent as one might expect from a prodigiously gifted, grown adult man given seemingly limitless resources to make a four-and-a-half-hour movie about a team of sexy female assassins named after poisonous snakes.\”

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It took 22 years. Worth every one of them.

“,
“category”: “Movies

The post Best New Movies This Weekend: Mando, Kill Bill, and More appeared first on Cream.

• Pedro Pascal showed up in full Mandalorian armor to surprise about 15 guests boarding the Millennium Falcon at Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
• He removed his helmet mid-surprise, joking “Now you all have to die because you’ve seen my face”
• Director Jon Favreau, Sigourney Weaver, and Lucasfilm President Dave Filoni were also at the park for the visit
• The stunt ties into the theatrical release of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, hitting theaters May 22
• The film picks up after Season 3 of the Disney+ series and also stars Sigourney Weaver and Jeremy Allen White

A small group of Star Wars fans visiting Disneyland this weekend had no idea they were about to meet the man behind the helmet. Pedro Pascal suited up in full Mandalorian armor — head-to-toe black, helmet and all — and walked straight into the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run attraction to greet unsuspecting guests before they boarded the ride.

About 15 visitors were invited aboard the iconic ship’s loading area as part of the surprise, which was captured on video and shared by the official Star Wars and Disneyland Instagram accounts. In behind-the-scenes footage shot before Pascal stepped into the attraction, the actor can be seen putting on the Mandalorian helmet and cracking himself up in the process.

“Don’t make it too obvious it’s me,” he jokes. Then, adjusting his voice: “I don’t think they’re gonna hear my welcome” — before adding, with a casual wave — “I’ll just be like, what’s up?”

The guests walked into the main hold of the Falcon to find the Mandalorian quietly waiting alongside them. A Cast Member greeted them with a cheerful “Bright suns, travelers!” before prompting the helmeted figure — asking if he had anything to say before sending them on their journey.

Pascal slowly lifted the helmet off his face. The room erupted.

“Now you all have to die because you’ve seen my face,” he deadpanned, nodding to the Mandalorian warrior code around never removing their helmets. The guests — visibly stunned, screaming, laughing — then got to pose for photos with him.

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A Full Galaxy’s Edge Takeover

Pascal wasn’t alone for the Disneyland visit. Director and co-writer Jon Favreau, Mandalorian & Grogu co-star Sigourney Weaver, and Lucasfilm President Dave Filoni were all in attendance at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The group was spotted on the walkway overlooking the Millennium Falcon, taking in “The Curious Child” — a limited-time nighttime show running at the park to build buzz for the film’s May 22 release.

Disney Parks also confirmed that both Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World will be rolling out Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu-inspired food and drinks to mark the occasion, along with new souvenir novelties at both locations.

What the Movie Is Actually About

After three seasons on Disney+, Din Djarin and Grogu are heading to the big screen. The film is set shortly after the events of The Mandalorian Season 3 — which ended with Mando officially adopting Grogu — and follows the pair as they take on a mission to rescue Rotta the Hutt, played by Jeremy Allen White, in exchange for critical information. All of this while the fledgling New Republic tries to hold the galaxy together in the Empire’s wake.

Sigourney Weaver, who joins the franchise for the first time in the film, told E! News at the Los Angeles premiere on May 14 that fans should expect Grogu to surprise them. “He looks like a little creature-eating, happy-go-lucky guy,” she said, “but I think he’s got much more of a warrior in him than we think.”

That premiere was no small affair. The red carpet stretched across Hollywood Boulevard — shutting down the street entirely, Oscars-style — outside the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX. Pascal, Weaver, and Favreau were all there, and Pascal got a surprise visit from The Last of Us co-star Gabriel Luna on the carpet.

Pascal has spoken openly about how much the role means to him personally. “I can’t tell you how important it is to me to be a part of something that could be the kind of memory that it was, to see Star Wars on the big screen as a kid with my family, with my friends, repeat watches and to just have that be part of my childhood,” he told Access Hollywood at the premiere.

He’s also been candid about the collaborative nature of playing a character who spends most of his screen time behind a helmet. Pascal has credited fellow suit and stunt performers Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder as essential to bringing Din Djarin to life across the series — a partnership that carries over into the film.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu opens in theaters May 22. If the Disneyland moment is any indication, Pascal is going to enjoy every second of it.

The post Pedro Pascal Surprises Disneyland Fans as the Mandalorian appeared first on Cream.

• Pedro Pascal says he wants to keep playing Din Djarin “for as long as my body can take it”
• Death rumors are swirling around The Mandalorian and Grogu after trailers teased Djarin preparing Grogu for life without him
• Pascal revealed he had no idea he was being cast as the lead when Jon Favreau first showed him the show
• The Mandalorian and Grogu hits theaters May 22 — the first Star Wars film since The Rise of Skywalker
• The cast includes Sigourney Weaver, Jeremy Allen White, and a Martin Scorsese voice cameo

Seven years into playing Din Djarin, Pedro Pascal isn’t ready to hang up the beskar armor anytime soon — death rumors be damned.

At a UK fan event Q&A ahead of The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s May 22 theatrical release, Pascal got candid about his history with the role and what he’s hoping comes next. “I’m completely grateful. It’s the longest creative relationship I’ve had, it’s the character that I’ve played the longest,” he said. “Hopefully, I get to continue playing him for as long as my body, or as many bodies as we put into the suit, can take it.”

It’s a quote that’s equal parts heartfelt and knowing — because right now, fans are genuinely worried that Din Djarin might not make it out of his first big-screen adventure alive.

Why Fans Think Din Djarin Might Die in the New Film

The trailers for The Mandalorian and Grogu have been leaning hard into one particular emotional thread: Mando preparing Grogu for a future without him. It makes sense within the mythology — Grogu is a Force-sensitive being who will outlive Din Djarin by centuries — but the way Lucasfilm has made it a centerpiece of the marketing has set off alarm bells for fans who’ve seen this kind of setup before.

Pascal addressed it directly, if carefully, at the Q&A. “They are real partners, at this point,” he said of the duo. “Grogu is on every mission, on every adventure, they are side by side. And it’s sentimental, because Din Djarin knows that this creature will outlive him, and I think that, existentially, he’s very, very focused on making sure that he can survive in a world without him.”

He went even deeper on the emotional core of their bond. “The power that Grogu has surpasses Mando’s by a lot. And yet none of us wants to let go of our child, and none of us wants to keep that child from growing into everything that they can do. So that’s really, I think, the very, very textured relationship and story that they’re able to tell on a thrill ride that you cannot believe.”

It’s a beautifully articulated answer — and also one that reveals absolutely nothing about whether Djarin actually survives. Pascal knows exactly what he can and can’t say with weeks to go before release. Lucasfilm’s secrecy is legendary, and he’s been in this world long enough to play the game perfectly.

The Accidental Casting Story That Makes It All Better

While the death speculation gives this press tour a layer of dramatic tension, the real gem from the Q&A was Pascal’s story about how he got the role in the first place — and the fact that he had absolutely no idea it was his.

“The very first thing that happened was a call from my agent that said, ‘Jon Favreau wants to talk to you about something Star Wars,'” Pascal recalled. “Because everything Star Wars was so secret. And I was like, ‘Okay.’ And I got there early, and so I sat on my phone for a bit, because I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to interrupt the writers’ room or anything like that. Jon comes out into the parking lot. He’s like, ‘Hey, come out of your car.'”

“And I got out of the car, they take me in,” he continued. “They show me this magical, magical, wall to wall, first season story illustration, this entire world of Star Wars. I see Grogu. And I asked, I said, ‘Okay, so, what am I? Like, who — am I a droid? What voice do you want?’ Then they were like, blinking back at me like they were confused. And then they were like, ‘You’re the Mandalorian.'”

The man thought he might be voicing a robot. Now, seven years later, he’s the face of the franchise.

What the Movie Actually Looks Like

The Mandalorian and Grogu marks the first Star Wars film to hit theaters since The Rise of Skywalker back in 2019, and it’s bringing a stacked cast along for the ride. Sigourney Weaver plays New Republic Colonel Ward, Jeremy Allen White takes on the role of Rotta the Hutt — son of Jabba — and Martin Scorsese shows up in a voice cameo as an Ardennian who owns a food truck.

Director Jon Favreau clearly had a blast with that last one. “He’s great, he’s hilarious — and the type of character, we gave him room to do his thing,” Favreau said of Scorsese’s cameo. “It really plays into his performance style and the animators and creature designers really leaned into it so it’s one of the highlights of the film for me.”

The plot centers on Din Djarin and Grogu being enlisted by the New Republic to rescue Rotta the Hutt in exchange for information from the Hutt clan on a mysterious target. For fans who’ve been waiting since The Mandalorian Season 3 wrapped in 2023, this is the reunion they’ve been counting down to — and a prequel comic is also on the way to fill in what the duo’s been up to in the interim.

Box office projections have been modest by Star Wars standards, but the film’s efficient production budget means success is well within reach. And if it performs, the appetite for more is obvious — Mandalorian Season 4 isn’t happening anytime soon, which makes this film the only game in town for Mando fans.

Whatever happens to Din Djarin on May 22, Pedro Pascal has made one thing clear: he’s not done with this character. Whether the galaxy far, far away is done with him is the question the film will have to answer.

The post Pedro Pascal Wants to Keep Playing The Mandalorian Forever appeared first on Cream.

• 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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