The Mandalorian and Grogu Opens to a Solid $97M–$98M Memorial Day Weekend — But the Holiday Is Still Down Big

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu had a decent Memorial Day weekend. Not a disaster, not a phenomenon — just a solid, well-liked movie doing solid, well-liked movie numbers.

Jon Favreau's film, starring Pedro Pascal and the internet's perpetual favorite Baby Yoda, opened across approximately 4,300 theaters. Saturday's estimated gross came in at $25.5M, and by Sunday night the 4-day projection had been revised upward to $97M–$98M, with the 3-day sitting at $81M–$82M. Previews plus Friday totaled $33M. Rival studios had pegged the 4-day closer to $100M; Disney didn't confirm that number.

Audience reception was genuinely warm. The film earned an A- CinemaScore — the same grade Solo: A Star Wars Story pulled in when it opened over Memorial Day 2018 to $84.4M (3-day) and $103M (4-day). PostTrak's "definite recommend" held steady at 71%, and the Rotten Tomatoes audience score landed at 88%. The leading location was AMC Disney Springs in Orlando, which took in around $133K on its own.

International numbers added roughly $69M (unverified by Disney), putting the projected worldwide opening somewhere around $167M on the high end against a $160M forecast. Not bad. Not Avengers. The unnamed talent rep who said heading into the weekend that "sometimes, these movies make more in merchandise than the actual movie" wasn't entirely wrong — Lucasfilm has moved 13 million Grogu toys in the two years since the Disney+ series launched.

The broader Memorial Day picture is a different story. Total 4-day weekend box office for all films is projected at $209M, down 37% from last year's record of $330.1M. That record was propped up by Lilo & Stitch ($182.6M holiday start) and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning ($79M) opening in the same frame. This year's lineup simply couldn't replicate that.

The rest of the chart had its own moments. Obsession, the horror film from Focus Features and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster directed by Curry Barker, had a genuinely strong hold — estimated $8.35M Saturday, with a projected 4-day of $27M and a 3-day of $21.5M, up 26% from the prior weekend. Its 11-day cumulative is now projected at $55.1M. Distribution head Lisa Bunnell has to be pleased. The "definite recommend" score ticked up to 74% from 70%, which is the kind of word-of-mouth that keeps a horror film running. For context, Longlegs ended its domestic run at $74.3M; Focus Features' all-time domestic horror record belongs to Nosferatu at $95.6M. Obsession isn't there yet, but it's in the conversation.

Michael, Antoine Fuqua's Michael Jackson biopic distributed by Lionsgate, is quietly becoming one of the bigger stories of the summer. It posted an estimated $7.75M Saturday and is projected at $26M+ for the 4-day. More significantly, its global cumulative is approaching $800M — projected at $788.8M by end of day Monday, with domestic at $317.8M. Oppenheimer's final domestic gross was $330M. Michael is closing in.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in its fourth weekend at 3,300 sites, projecting a $10M–$11M 3-day and $13M–$14M 4-day, with a running domestic cumulative of $197.5M by Monday.

For Mandalorian and Grogu specifically, the comparison to Furiosa — which underperformed significantly at Memorial Day 2024 — was the quiet fear heading in. That didn't happen. Rival studios, per reports, aren't dismissing the result. An opening in the high $90s for a Star Wars film that isn't a mainline Skywalker saga entry, with genuinely positive audience scores, is a reasonable outcome. Whether it has legs is the next question.

[Original Source](https://deadline.com/2026/05/box-office-mandalorian-and-grogu-1236918713/)