Mandalorian and Grogu plummets 69% in second week as Backrooms shatters A24’s record
The Star Wars film is projected to fall to third place in week two behind Backrooms and Obsession, putting it on Solo’s collapse trajectory.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is heading for a brutal second weekend at the box office. According to multiple industry projections, the film is expected to drop roughly 65 to 70% from its opening frame, landing somewhere around $24 to $30 million domestically. That would put it in third place behind the historic micro-budget horror hit Obsession and the new A24 horror release Backrooms, which is on track to record one of the biggest opening weekends in independent film history.
For a Star Wars movie, this kind of drop is ugly. And the competition is the brutal part.
The week-two collapse
The Mandalorian and Grogu opened to $82 million over its three-day weekend and $98 million over the four-day Memorial Day frame, plus another $69 million overseas, for a global start of about $167 million against a reported $165 million production budget.
That made it the lowest-grossing opening for any Star Wars movie in the Disney era, but still the 12th-best Memorial Day opening of all time and the fourth-best post-COVID Memorial Day debut behind Lilo & Stitch, Top Gun: Maverick, and The Little Mermaid.
One week later, the film is projected to fall to roughly $24 to $30 million for its second weekend, a drop in the 65 to 70% range. Deadline and World of Reel both have it pegged at around 69%.
A 65 to 70% drop is significant even for a holiday opener. Most major studio films aim to hold in the 50 to 60% range in week two. Anything above 65% is considered rough, and 70%-plus is the territory of films that opened strongly but failed to build word-of-mouth momentum or generate repeat viewing.
This kind of decline suggests that while The Mandalorian and Grogu had solid opening-weekend business driven by fans and families, it is not generating the kind of urgent buzz that would help it hold against the new releases hitting theaters this weekend.
Obsession has already beaten it on weekdays
Part of the second-weekend pressure comes from a horror movie that should not realistically be competing with a Star Wars film at all.
Obsession, made by 26-year-old YouTuber Curry Barker for under $1 million in 20 days, has been on a historic theatrical run. The Focus Features release earned $17.2 million in its opening frame, then grew 39% in its second weekend to $23.9 million for a Memorial Day three-day, plus over $5 million more on Monday for a four-day total above $30 million. Blumhouse founder Jason Blum, who produced the film, called it “the ONLY wide-release horror film on record to grow in its second weekend at this scale.”
That weekend hold pushed Obsession past The Mandalorian and Grogu on individual weekdays. On Wednesday, May 27, Obsession earned $5.6 million versus Mandalorian‘s $4.2 million. On Thursday, the gap widened to $4.8 million versus $3.5 million. The horror film reclaimed the daily number one spot from the Star Wars movie two days in a row.
Obsession has now grossed over $60 million domestically and over $79 million worldwide. Comscore chief box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian said he has been tracking box office for 33 years and thought he had seen it all until Obsession‘s second-weekend performance.
Backrooms is opening even bigger
Backrooms is the headline story this weekend.
The A24 and Chernin Entertainment release, directed by 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons based on his viral Backrooms web series, was originally tracking around $20 million three weeks ago. That projection has gradually climbed to $45 to $50 million by midweek, then $70 million-plus by Wednesday evening per World of Reel. By Friday afternoon, the actual numbers tell a different story.
Backrooms pulled in $10.4 million in Thursday previews. Friday alone is tracking between $33 and $35 million across 3,442 theaters. Deadline is now projecting a three-day weekend of $76 to $79 million, with industry observers floating a possible $80 million-plus outcome. The film has an 87% Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh rating, and 87% of opening-day audiences are under 35.
If those numbers hold, Backrooms will more than triple A24’s previous opening weekend record of $25.5 million set by Civil War in 2024. It will also more than double The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s opening weekend, against a budget of just $10 million.
A $10 million horror film directed by a 20-year-old in his feature debut is on track to outgross seven years of Star Wars theatrical anticipation by a nearly two-to-one margin in week two.
How does this compare to other Star Wars second weekends?
Historical second-weekend drops for previous Star Wars films, per Box Office Mojo, provide useful context.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015): dropped 39.8% in week two, an exceptional hold
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016): dropped 58.7%
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017): dropped 67.5%, a steep fall from a $220 million opening
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018): dropped 65.2% from its three-day, 71.46% from its four-day Memorial Day opening
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019): dropped 59%
A 65 to 70% drop puts The Mandalorian and Grogu squarely in Solo and Last Jedi territory. That is the company you do not want a Star Wars movie keeping. Solo finished its theatrical run at $392.9 million worldwide and lost Disney an estimated $70 to $100 million. Last Jedi finished at over $1.3 billion globally but is widely cited as the moment the sequel trilogy lost the audience.
Will it even break even?
This is the big question.
The Mandalorian and Grogu had a relatively modest production budget for a Star Wars film at $165 million. When you add global marketing and distribution costs, industry estimates put the worldwide break-even point somewhere in the $475 to $600 million range, depending on which multipliers and which deal terms you assume.
At its current trajectory, the math is tight. The film stood at roughly $108.8 million domestic after Thursday of week two. If it drops 69% to roughly $25 million this weekend and continues at that pace, it is on track for a domestic finish around $180 to $220 million. Combined with international, that suggests a global total in the $350 to $450 million range, the same neighborhood as Solo.
The film does have one advantage. It has a three-week IMAX lock domestically, which will help it weather Backrooms. International performance is also slightly stronger than initial tracking suggested, at $69 million versus an originally reported $63 million. And ancillary revenue from streaming, home video, and merchandise will close some of the gap, particularly with Grogu still being one of the strongest merchandising IPs in the Disney portfolio.
But a clean theatrical break-even now looks unlikely. The Mandalorian and Grogu will probably need its full ancillary tail to avoid joining Solo on the list of money-losing Star Wars films.
The bigger picture for Star Wars
This kind of second-weekend collapse is not just a one-off problem. It is another sign that theatrical Star Wars spin-offs are facing real challenges right now. Solo struggled. The Mandalorian and Grogu is struggling. The brand still has power, but it is no longer an automatic guarantee of strong theatrical performance, especially when the film feels like an extension of a Disney+ TV series rather than a must-see cinematic event.
The competitive context makes the drop look even worse. Obsession and Backrooms are not just any rival releases. They are filmmaker-driven horror titles from creators in their twenties who built their audiences on YouTube. Iron Lung from Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach opened to $50 million on a $3 million budget in February 2026. The pattern is now unmistakable. Young creators with established online followings are bringing audiences back to theaters in a way that legacy franchise extensions are not.
When a Star Wars film is dropping 69% in week two, losing weekdays to a $1 million horror movie, and watching a $10 million A24 release roughly double its opening weekend, it is worth asking whether the current Disney theatrical strategy for Star Wars is working as well as the company hoped.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is not a disaster. But this kind of drop makes it look like one of the weaker entries in the franchise’s theatrical history, and it raises real questions about how much theatrical juice the Star Wars brand still has left. The next Star Wars film, Shawn Levy‘s Star Wars: Starfighter with Ryan Gosling, is set for Memorial Day 2027. It will arrive in a theatrical market where the rules have visibly shifted, and where original genre filmmaking is currently eating franchise legacy filmmaking alive.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Deadline, May 30, 2026 reporting on Backrooms tracking surge to $76 to $79 million and The Mandalorian and Grogu projected 69% second-weekend drop
World of Reel (May 28, 2026), second-weekend drop projections and Memorial Day box office trends
The Hollywood Reporter (May 27, 2026), historic Obsession second-weekend performance and Curry Barker career background
Cosmic Book News and BamSmackPow, reporting on individual weekday performances and Obsession beating Mandalorian on Wednesday and Thursday
Variety and The Wrap, Backrooms opening weekend tracking and A24 historical opening records
Box Office Mojo, verified historical second-weekend drops for Force Awakens, Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker, Rogue One, and Solo
Rotten Tomatoes Editorial, weekend box office summary and broader Memorial Day weekend analysis
Cinemablend and Slashfilm, historical context on Rise of Skywalker versus The Force Awakens second-weekend performance