🪙Being objective, here’s my quick post mortem on The Mandalorian and Grogu: Disney wanted a movie in the theaters asap. So they tested The Mandalorian to see if it had enough of a built in fanbase to make the jump.
Favreau already had it in full production and easily converted for film. He even wrote a separate adventure that wasn’t season 4 so casual fans didn’t need to see the show. Clearly this particular story didn't drive enough casual interest.
However there's no telling the positive impact this will have on Disney or the merchandising power the film has had. Guaranteed it will be the #1 Disney movie for a while.
I have to commend Favreau for resisting the use of big name cameos from deepfake Luke, Han, or Leia, to sell tickets. He made a simple fun movie that went back to the roots of The Mandalorian. You saw Din and Grogu’s greatest hits, from the return of the Razorcrest, to Grogu force healing and stealing snacks. It was classic Mando.
What does that tell us? It tells me the general audience really wants EVENT films. They want lightsabers, Jedi, Sith, spaces battles, high stakes, and cool new characters and ships. They want a BADASS villain.
They want to understand where it is in the timeline too. Thats why George’s formula worked. He made trilogies in one part of the timeline and left you wanting more because it took 3 movies to tell the story.
Successful streaming shows like HBO’s The Pitt, or Marvel’s Daredevil would also have failed at the box office. Once you stream it, most people are not buying a ticket to watch it.
The future of Disney in theaters will clearly not be standalone side adventures. Solo and now Mando are fun but low stakes films with no lightsabers, no Jedi, and no box office money!
Despite that, the brand isn’t close to dead. We just had Andor and Maul that were objectively amazing. Starfighter is coming in a year and Ahsoka Season 2 in less than a year. After 2027, we can revaluate again while waiting the next trilogy from Simon Kinberg.
Who knows, maybe they have some surprises in store too!