THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU Lands on Disney+ in September
Mando and Grogu are heading back to where their adventure started. After bringing Star Wars back to theaters this summer, The Mandalorian and Grogu will make its Disney+ debut on September 2, giving fans another chance to jump into Din Djarin and Grogu’s latest adventure from the comfort of home.
I’m happy more people are going to get the chance to see this movie because I had a great time with it. I thought it was a really fun Star Wars story that captured a lot of what I enjoy about the franchise. It’s just a shame audiences didn’t turn out for it in bigger numbers during its theatrical run.
The movie earned $345 million worldwide after opening in theaters on May 22. That unfortunately makes it the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars movie, coming in below the $393 million earned by Solo: A Star Wars Story. It reportedly cost $165 million to produce and kicked off its run with $102 million over Memorial Day weekend.
Those aren’t exactly the numbers Disney and Lucasfilm were probably hoping for when bringing Star Wars back to the big screen for the first time in nearly seven years. The previous theatrical release, The Rise of Skywalker, arrived in 2019 and went on to earn more than $1 billion worldwide.
I wish The Mandalorian and Grogu had found a larger theatrical audience because I loved the movie and I wanted it to succeed. It felt like a great continuation of Mando and Grogu’s journey while also working as a big-screen Star Wars adventure.
Directed by Jon Favreau, the movie takes place after the events of The Mandalorian Season 3 and Ahsoka Season 1. Favreau also co-wrote the film with Dave Filoni, who was promoted to president of Lucasfilm earlier this year following Kathleen Kennedy’s departure.
The story follows bounty hunter Din Djarin, played and voiced by Pedro Pascal, and his little green apprentice Grogu as they’re recruited by Colonel Ward, played by Sigourney Weaver, to help the New Republic with a particularly messy mission.
Their job eventually involves rescuing Rotta the Hutt, the heir to Jabba the Hutt, as part of their efforts to locate an Imperial leader. Rotta is voiced by Jeremy Allen White, which remains one of those wonderfully strange casting choices that makes perfect sense once you actually see what the movie is doing.
Pascal provides Mando’s voice, while stunt performers Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne handle much of Din Djarin’s physical performance inside the armor.
The movie also features Martin Scorsese in a guest appearance as fry cook Hugo Durant. It’s actually another connection between Scorsese and Star Wars, as the filmmaker previously had a brief role in Solo: A Star Wars Story as the cook Rio Durant.
With the September 2 Disney+ release, The Mandalorian and Grogu will now be easily accessible alongside the shows that led into it. I’m curious to see whether the movie finds a much bigger audience through streaming, especially among fans who followed The Mandalorian for years on Disney+ but decided not to make the jump to theaters.
It deserves that second life. I really enjoyed the story Favreau and Filoni told here, and seeing Mando and Grogu operating on a cinematic scale was awesome. The disappointing box office performance doesn’t change the fact that I thought it was a damn good Star Wars movie.
There’s also plenty more happening with Star Wars on the theatrical side. The next movie scheduled for the franchise is Star Wars: Starfighter, which is set to hit theaters May 28, 2027. Ryan Gosling will star in the film, with Shawn Levy directing.
For now, though, Mando and Grogu get another shot at finding their audience. If you skipped The Mandalorian and Grogu in theaters, you’ll be able to catch it on Disney+, and if you already saw it, well, watching Grogu get into trouble again isn’t exactly a hard sell.