Earlier in the week, Disney surprisingly revealed Din Djarin will be headlining two films. Along with Dave Filoni’s New Republic-era movie still potentially called Heir to the Empire, the Mandalorian will star in The Mandalorian & Grogu, which sees father and son go on a big-screen adventure.
In what is surely a shock, Lucasfilm isn’t entirely dismissing the possibility of future Mando movies. The Hollywood Reporter’s newest Heat Vision newsletter reveals the movie took priority over season four of The Mandalorian, whose scripts were completed ahead of 2023’s Hollywood strikes. And should the movie end up being success, it may be the start of a “next phase” wherein Din and Grogu’s adventures are now done via movies rather than weekly episodic adventures.
Nothing is set in stone quite yet, but this isn’t too surprising to hear. The Mandalorian is extremely popular, and if the people are clamouring loudly for him and his little guy on the silver screen, then Disney’s going to meet that demand for as long as Pedro Pascal, Dave Filoni, and Jon Favreau will allow. But what made Din’s story so engaging when he first debuted in 2019 is how Filoni and Favreau managed to perfectly replicate the theatrical Star Wars experience on the small screen. The pair have made stories that perfectly fit into an episodic TV mold, and the jump to a new medium breathed life into the series after Rise of Skywalker put a bow on the films. Along with Andor and arguably The Bad Batch, The Mandalorian has helped define what Star Wars TV is, for better and worse.
So how will the series fare when you take it out of TV and put it in the movies? We’ll see when either The Mandalorian & Grogu or Heir to the Empire release in the next couple of years.