THE MANDALORIAN & GROGU Marks The Lowest-Budget STAR WARS Movie Disney Has Ever Made
Star Wars is finally heading back to theaters, and this time it’s doing something it hasn’t managed in over a decade. The franchise’s next big-screen release, The Mandalorian & Grogu, is set to break a major Disney-era record by having the lowest production budget of any Star Wars movie since 2015.
After years of ballooning costs and financial headaches, Lucasfilm has clearly changed its approach, and it’s a big deal for the future of the franchise.
George Lucas built Star Wars into a juggernaut while keeping a tight grip on spending. The original Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope was famously made for just $11 million, about $58.4 million when adjusted for inflation, and it went on to earn an absurd $775.4 million worldwide, well over $4 billion today.
Even as budgets rose through the original and prequel trilogies, profitability stayed strong. That balance shifted under Disney. While the movies looked incredible, their budgets often spiraled.
Solo: A Star Wars Story became the clearest example. Extensive reshoots pushed costs so high that it ended up as Lucasfilm’s first outright box office bomb. Similar spending issues carried over to Disney+ projects.
The Acolyte reportedly cost more than $230 million, and Andor’s two-season run climbed past $645 million. For a while, it felt like Star Wars had forgotten how to spend responsibly.
That’s why The Mandalorian & Grogu is such a surprising course correction. Even though the movie won’t hit theaters until 2026, its budget is already public thanks to California tax credit filings.
According to the California Film Commission, via Collider, the total production cost sits at $166.4 million. That figure alone sets it apart from nearly every Disney-era Star Wars film.
To put that into perspective, here’s how it stacks up against the rest of the saga:
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977): $11 million
Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980): $18 million
Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983): $32.5 million
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999): $115 million
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002): $115 million
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005): $113 million
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015): $245 million
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016): $200 million
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017): $317 million
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018): $275 million
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019): $275 million
The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026): $166.4 million
What makes this even wilder is how close that number is to the TV series itself. The Mandalorian Season 1 reportedly cost between $100 and $120 million, and that spending stayed fairly consistent across all three seasons.
In other words, this movie only costs a bit more than a single season of the show. For a theatrical Star Wars release, that’s almost unheard of in the modern era.
This movie also represents a new strategy for Lucasfilm. A lower-budget theatrical release means the financial bar for success is much lower. It doesn’t need to chase billion-dollar box office numbers to be considered a win, and once its theater run ends, it’s practically guaranteed to perform well on streaming.
That said, this approach could be risky from a perception standpoint. Fans have waited seven years for a new Star Wars movie, and expectations for a massive theatrical event are high. The first couple of trailers didn’t exactly blow the doors off, but there’s still time for marketing to shift that narrative.
There are some very practical reasons why the budget stayed under control. Jon Favreau has spent years building The Mandalorian alongside Lucasfilm, and that experience shows. There haven’t been any reports of the kind of production chaos that hurt projects like Solo or Rogue One.
Filming kicked off in June 2024, leaned heavily on ILM’s StageCraft technology instead of costly location shoots, and wrapped cleanly in December. By all accounts, it was a smooth, efficient production from start to finish.
And this isn’t a one-off experiment. The Mandalorian & Grogu will be followed by Starfighter in 2027, directed by Shawn Levy. Its budget hasn’t been revealed yet, but its filming schedule was even tighter.
Production ran from August 28 to December 18, with Levy teasing location shoots in the Mediterranean Sea. A shorter shoot usually means tighter spending, so odds are this movie will continue the trend.
Taken together, it really looks like Lucasfilm has solved one of its biggest post-Lucas issues. Budgets are finally under control, the production pipeline is running efficiently, and new Star Wars movies are lining up on a yearly basis.
If this model holds, the franchise might finally be back in a place where it can take creative swings without needing to break box office records just to stay afloat.