Today is May the Fourth, the fan-made Star Wars holiday, and Lucasfilm picked the date to do something it almost never does for a tentpole: hand fans the first 20 minutes of an upcoming theatrical release. Starting May 4, IMAX screens around the world are showing an extended preview of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu ahead of its May 22 wide opening. The move is part stunt and part strategy, and it lands at a moment when the studio is quietly trying to recalibrate expectations for what could be the lowest-grossing Star Wars debut on record.
What Happened
The Mandalorian and Grogu is the first Star Wars feature film since 2019's The Rise of Skywalker, and the first ever continuation of a Disney+ live-action series to graduate to the big screen. Jon Favreau, who created and ran the streaming show, returns as director. Pedro Pascal returns as Din Djarin, with Sigourney Weaver, Jeremy Allen White, and even Martin Scorsese listed in the cast. Disney has scheduled the film for a four-day Memorial Day launch on May 22, the kind of slot historically reserved for the company's safest blockbusters.
The May 4 IMAX preview is the headline news this week. Disney is letting paying IMAX audiences watch the opening 20 minutes of the film, which Favreau himself has framed as the closest thing the franchise has to a feature-length premiere event before launch night. Disney is also leaning into the "May the Fourth" branding across stores and streaming, but the IMAX play is the real bet—it puts the most committed fans in front of the movie first and gives them a head start to talk about it. Pre-release box-office tracking, surveyed by Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, currently has the film in the $80 million-plus range over the four-day Memorial Day frame, with some analysts wishfully bumping that toward $100 million if good word of mouth catches.
Why It Matters
Eighty million dollars is a healthy debut for almost any studio film. It is also, awkwardly, what the conversation calls "a soft Star Wars opening." Solo: A Star Wars Story did $103 million in the same four-day Memorial Day slot in 2018 and was eventually written off as a financial disappointment. If The Mandalorian and Grogu lands at the lower end of its tracking range, it would be the smallest live-action Star Wars debut since the Disney era began. That is a real story about how the franchise has been managed since the streaming gold rush, and it is one Disney is trying to get ahead of.
The strategy is interesting because it leans on the strength of the Disney+ show rather than fighting it. Mandalorian fans love the show, but they have spent six years watching it on a couch. Disney is betting that the IMAX preview, plus pre-show stunts at theme parks and theaters, will convert that streaming audience into a theatrical audience by reminding them what the IP looks like at scale. Reporting from Gizmodo notes that the film is currently skewing toward men over 25, and that Disney has a clear plan to widen that audience to families before opening weekend.
For the broader theatrical business, the stakes are familiar but worth restating. Memorial Day weekend has been wobbly for years; a strong Mandalorian and Grogu could push it back to pre-pandemic shape, while a soft launch deepens the narrative that summer 2026 belongs to a few hits—Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Devil Wears Prada 2, the Michael biopic—and very few middle-class winners. Exhibitors are watching this opening as a referendum on whether legacy IP can still anchor a holiday weekend without a "true sequel" hook in the title.
Reaction
Inside the Star Wars community, the IMAX preview has flipped the conversation in a useful way. Fan reaction online to the trailers had been polite but cool; the "lowest opening ever" framing dominated headlines through April. The preview gives die-hards something tangible to react to, and early word from May 4 screenings has tilted positive—people are calling it more of a movie and less of a feature-length episode of the show, which is exactly the line Disney wants traveling.
Critics, of course, do not get to publish reviews until closer to release, but social-first reactions out of IMAX premieres in major markets have been broadly enthusiastic about Favreau's handling of the opening sequence and Sigourney Weaver's introduction. There is also a non-trivial chunk of online conversation focused on Martin Scorsese's role, which the marketing has kept deliberately mysterious. That is a casting beat fans rarely associate with Star Wars, and it is doing some of the work to pull a curious general audience into the theater.
Some industry voices are skeptical of the strategy. Showing the first 20 minutes of a film that needs strong second-weekend legs is not a default playbook move, and a lukewarm reaction this week could harden into a problem before May 22. Boxoffice Pro's long-range forecast still keeps a $100 million ceiling in play if the preview reaction holds positive, but its floor has drifted lower in recent weeks.
What's Next
The next two weeks are about converting interest into tickets. Expect Disney to widen the IMAX preview into more screens, lean on theme-park integrations at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and use streaming touchpoints on Disney+ to remind subscribers that the show they binged in 2019 has a continuation in cinemas. Watch for second-weekend tracking data after the preview screenings settle—if the film holds the upper end of the $80–$100 million range, the Solo comparison fades fast.
Beyond the opening weekend, the longer game is whether this film resets the pipeline. Lucasfilm has been quietly rebuilding its slate with director Shawn Levy's Starfighter set for May 2027 and several other features in development. A confident Mandalorian and Grogu performance gives those projects momentum and reassures Disney's theatrical team that long-running streaming shows can credibly graduate to theaters. A wobbly debut, on the other hand, accelerates a question the industry has been asking quietly all year: should Star Wars be a Disney+ flagship first and a theatrical brand second?
Closing Thoughts
The Mandalorian and Grogu is the rare Star Wars release that arrives without a clear narrative attached to it. It is not a saga capper, not a Skywalker chapter, not a villain origin movie. It is a continuation of a beloved show, with a director who knows the tone, and it is being marketed as exactly that—a familiar Friday night, scaled up to a screen. The May 4 IMAX preview is the most fan-forward marketing move Disney has tried in years for the franchise, and it has reframed the conversation from skepticism to curiosity at an important moment. Whether that lifts the opening past the Solo comparison is a question for May 22. For today, on May the Fourth, Lucasfilm got fans into seats, and that is worth more than another trailer.
한글 요약
오늘 5월 4일은 팬들이 즐기는 '메이 더 포스(May the Fourth)' 스타워즈 데이다. 디즈니와 루카스필름은 이날을 맞아 5월 22일 메모리얼데이 주말에 개봉하는 신작 'Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu'의 첫 20분 분량을 전 세계 IMAX 상영관에서 미리 공개하기로 했다. 시리즈의 크리에이터인 존 파브로가 직접 메가폰을 잡았고, 페드로 파스칼·시고니 위버·제레미 알렌 화이트, 그리고 마틴 스코세이지까지 출연진에 이름을 올렸다.
현재 박스오피스 트래킹은 4일 오프닝 기준 8000만 달러 안팎으로 잡혀 있다. 일반 영화 기준으로는 견실한 출발이지만, 디즈니가 인수한 이후 라이브 액션 스타워즈 영화 가운데 가장 낮은 데뷔가 될 가능성이 있다. 비교 기준은 2018년 'Solo: A Star Wars Story'의 4일간 1억 300만 달러다. 디즈니는 IMAX 사전 공개 외에도 디즈니랜드 연계, 디즈니+ 가입자 대상 캠페인, 가족 단위 마케팅 확대로 부족한 톱라인을 메우려 하고 있다.
업계의 관전 포인트는 두 가지다. 우선 IMAX 사전 상영의 입소문이 둘째 주차 좌석 점유율로 이어지느냐 — 만약 그렇다면 'Solo'의 그늘은 빠르게 옅어질 수 있다. 그렇지 않다면 메모리얼데이 주말의 회복세가 다시 흔들리고, 스타워즈 IP를 극장이 아닌 스트리밍 우선으로 운영해야 한다는 논의가 더 빨리 무르익을 수 있다. 어느 쪽이든, 오늘의 IMAX 공개는 만달로리안과 그로구가 극장으로 돌아오는 가장 적극적인 신호탄이다.