Another ‘Star Wars’ Movie Heading to the Trash Compactor Following Dismal Results
Lucasfilm’s Mando-Verse just took another hit, and this time it could cost the franchise an entire movie that fans have been waiting years to see.
Star Wars has been in a rough patch for a while now. Projects sit untouched for years, announcements come and go with no follow-through, and the galaxy far, far away has rarely felt so uncertain about its own future. A lot of that uncertainty traces back to the franchise’s big streaming pivot.
The Mandalorian, which launched right alongside Disney+ itself, turned into the backbone of Star Wars content on the platform. Series after series followed, and Disney+ became the default home for anything Star Wars once the sequel trilogy closed out in December 2019.
But audiences eventually grew tired of the constant content pipeline. The Mando-Verse kept expanding with shows like The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, both of which landed to mixed or outright negative reception. The Book of Boba Fett has no future left in it, and Ahsoka is heading into what’s shaping up to be its final season sometime in early 2027.
Even The Mandalorian itself started losing steam by its third season, and the decision to send the story to theaters in 2026 pretty much confirmed that the New Republic era isn’t pulling audiences in the way it used to — even with Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin and Grogu front and center.
The Mandalorian and Grogu, which effectively replaced what would have been The Mandalorian Season 4, badly missed expectations at the global box office. The film pulled in a little over $340 million against a roughly $165 million budget. Things got especially rough when smaller horror titles like Obsession (2025) and Backrooms (2026) actually outperformed the Star Wars movie during its first few weeks in theaters.
During last week’s Walt Disney Company third-quarter earnings call, CEO Josh D’Amaro addressed the box office numbers for both The Mandalorian and Grogu and the live-action Moana (2026), another release that struggled globally.
“While audience scores for both Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu and fiscal Q4’s live action Moana have been strong, both films underperformed our box office expectations,” Disney wrote in its shareholder letter. “Even so, these franchise investments contributed to value creation beyond their theatrical releases.”
Disney also pointed out that the film “drove healthy growth in retail sales for the Star Wars franchise during the quarter,” and brought up the new Mandalorian-themed overlay for Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, which is now running at both Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort.
So between the box office stumble, Ahsoka‘s delayed second season, and the apparent cancellations of The Book of Boba Fett and Skeleton Crew, where does that leave the rest of the Mando-Verse? All signs point to Dave Filoni’s previously announced crossover movie quietly disappearing from the slate.
Back in 2023, then-Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy laid out three major upcoming Star Wars films: a New Republic movie from Filoni (who would go on to help lead the studio himself), a New Jedi Order movie from Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy starring Daisy Ridley as Rey, and a Dawn of the Jedi film from James Mangold. She later confirmed a separate trilogy from Simon Kinberg was also in development.
Since then, almost nothing concrete has come out about any of those projects beyond scattered comments about delays. With Filoni now running Lucasfilm alongside Lynwen Brennan, the odds of his own New Republic movie actually happening look slim. Between his new leadership role, cooling interest in the Mandalorian era, and the underwhelming box office of The Mandalorian and Grogu, cancellation seems like the likely outcome.
Reports suggest Filoni wrote Ahsoka Season 2 with a definitive ending in mind. It’s not clear exactly what that means, but it will almost certainly deal with the fallout of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s (Lars Mikkelsen) return, along with Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and Sabine Wren’s (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) escape from Peridea.
As more time passes, the odds of actually seeing seven years of New Republic storytelling reach a real conclusion keep shrinking. It’s looking increasingly likely that the Thrawn storyline stays confined to Disney+, whether as a series or a one-off special.
That said, Star Wars isn’t leaving theaters completely. Next May brings Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter (2027), starring Ryan Gosling. It’s being billed as a standalone story and will be the first Star Wars project to take place after the events of Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
If Star Wars: Starfighter does well — and there’s a real chance it could, given its standalone setup and Gosling’s star power — that would likely reinforce the idea that the Mando-Verse era has lost its grip over the last seven years, making cancellation of Filoni’s New Republic movie even more likely.
This wouldn’t be the franchise’s first quiet cut. There was the very public cancellation of Rangers of the New Republic after Gina Carano’s firing from her role as Cara Dune, but there have been quieter exits, too. It recently came out that a Star Wars project from Paddington 2 (2017) writer-director Paul King and co-writer Simon Farnaby was dropped from development altogether and is now being reworked as a non-IP project.
The future of the Mando-Verse looks shaky right now, and it seems like fan interest in what used to be the franchise’s strongest pillar is slipping.
What do you think is next for the Mando-Verse? Sound off in the comments.
