Rumor Report: The Mandalorian Season 4 Will Be Turned Into A Movie!

Reputable leaker Jeff Sneider (who has a really good track record – one of his more recent scoops was that Damon Lindelof is working on a Star Wars movie, which turned out to be 100% correct) has dropped quite the surprise in his Hot Mic podcast. According to Sneider The Mandalorian season 4 will not be released on Disney+, instead it will be turned into a movie and it will even be the first new Star Wars movie to be released! Click through for more!

You are about the enter the Star Wars Rumor Zone!

As mentioned Jeff Sneider has a pretty good track record when it comes to his rumors, he has been right about things several times before, he is not of the typical YouTube variety and he has actual industry sources. His track record speaks for itself. In fact, another leaker with a very good track record, Making Star Wars, already reported several months ago that Lucasfilm is considering the option to turn The Mandalorian season 4 into a movie. The reason for that is, according to the report, that Lucasfilm (and Disney) is eager to release a new Star Wars movie and that depending on how the Hollywood strike will affect things The Mandalorian could become a movie. Reportedly Favreau had already more or less finished his season 4 scripts / story, whereas the Rey movie still doesn’t have a finished script. But if Favreau’s season 4 is now a movie that would certainly require extensive rewrites and thus take time as well.

As of now Disney has scheduled two new Star Wars movies for 2026, with the first one being released in May 2026 and the other one following in December. That would mean we would not get new The Mandalorian content for another 2 1/2 years and if the plans do not change (i.e. the release is moved forward to 2025) this would also mean more than three long years would have passed between season 3 and a theatrical movie that would, for all intents and purposes, be season 4.

Quite frankly, I am baffled. There is no real reason to doubt Sneider and also Making Star Wars, both have been right about their Star Wars rumors many times before, so their track record speaks for itself. So this seems to be something Lucasfilm is really considering or even planning.

The first big question is: who would even be the “star” in the movie? Pedro Pascal has his slate full and he’s already booked to film various projects in 2024, which would almost certainly make it impossible for him to star in the “season 4” Mandalorian movie. Which would in turn mean Din Djarin would, like in season 3, never remove his helmet anymore and at best Pascal would lend his voice to the character in post production, whenever he has time in his busy schedule. Which already sounds like a terrible idea. Or they would add scenes with him unmasked very late into the process, in late 2025 or maybe even early 2026 in pick ups. A somewhat unlikely option could be of course to recast Din Djarin with someone else for the movie.

The next big question is: who even wants a The Mandalorian movie? Even if the ratings for The Mandalorian on Disney+ are really good, it is the most watched original content on the service, the Disney+ The Mandalorian viewership is only a fraction of the audience a typical Star Wars movie usually has. If we use average ticket prices for movies in the US even the most watched Mandalorian episodes on Disney+ would just get Solo: A Star Wars Story numbers in theaters. Roughly 23-24 million people in the US saw Solo in theaters, which is about what the best rated Mandalorian episodes had on Disney+ in the US.

Movies that just did “pretty good” at the domestic box office, The Rise of Skywalker and Rogue One, which made a little more than $500 million each, already had an audience of 56 million people in the US or so. Which is more than double of what The Mandalorian ever had as viewership on Disney+.

Which in turn means: if Lucasfilm is aiming to have a movie with broad appeal most of the potential audience has never ever seen a single episode of The Mandalorian. And has no real clue what has been happening on the show. They may at best know of the Mandalorian and Grogu, without having watched a single second of the show though.

So unless the movie is made on a budget – which is unlikely, given that it’s Star Wars – there is a real chance any The Mandalorian movie may not earn any money, just like Solo, and that movie lost money at the box office. If we use the Disney+ viewership numbers as basis for attendance we are talking maybe $300 million domestic and $600 million worldwide. A respectable number for any other movie, but it would certainly be somewhat of a disappointment for Star Wars. The media already dubbed The Rise of Skywalker the first one billion box office disappointment ever. And that means the movie, with marketing, must not cost more than $300 million to make. Given how a major Disney movie usually has a budget of at least $200 million plus $100 – $150 million marketing you can see how ambitious it may be to ever return a profit with a Mandalorian movie. And even if the movie can be made for “only” $100 million plus the same amount for marketing profit would still be pretty slim, maybe $50 million at best.

Then there’s the question of making a movie with no star. Even if that never meant much for Star Wars in the past, the leads have usually been unknowns. So it may be less of a factor. Still, Pedro Pascal is no one that would make people automatically say “let’s check out his movie”. And it’s doubtful Din Djarin as a character has enough appeal to convince more casual moviegoers to check out that “Disney+ movie”. So unless The Mandalorian movie had a major involvement of established Star Wars characters like a deepfaked CGI Luke and possibly Leia and Han the movie may simply have little appeal to more casual moviegoers who are not subscribed to Disney+ and have never seen a single episode of the show. Especially worldwide.

In addition there would be this massive gap between season 3 and the movie, a little more than three years, which is an eternity. Would most people even still remember what has happened before? Also: would the movie also be a quasi sequel to Ahsoka, building up to that Thrawn movie by Filoni? Or would that movie be “the” Mandoverse event movie? Ahsoka only had a fraction of The Mandalorian’s audience, barely 60%. And even season 3 of The Mandalorian lost, all things considered (total season viewership), 40% of its season 2 audience. So Lucasfilm now turning season 4 into a movie feels like a real headscratcher and more like a desperate attempt to release just “anything” Star Wars in theaters than anything else.

In my opinion the risks are simply too high for a Mandalorian movie to not make significantly more money than Solo. Unless you make it a Luke Skywalker movie with heavy involvement by him and possibly other Original Trilogy characters as well, and then base all the marketing for the movie mostly around him (and potentially the others) – but even then the fact remains that even top rated Mandalorian episodes on Disney+ featuring Luke Skywalker do not reach half of the audience of movies like Rogue One or The Rise of Skywalker have in theaters.
How would Lucasfilm convince people to go see a movie that is based on something they have never watched and will almost certainly require some level of prior knowledge? Of course The Mandalorian season 4 movie could be a kind of reset, only tangentially connected to previous seasons. And all you need to know about Ahsoka really is that a big bad villain has just returned to the galaxy, something they could easily show in the movie. For a Mandalorian movie it would be a positive that very little of actual note happened in Ahsoka and you can easily summarize the entire season in a short 5 minute sequence that (re)introduces Thrawn and explains who he is.

But ultimately I feel this is a sign of clear desperation at Disney and Lucasfilm and in my opinion it is a terrible idea to turn The Mandalorian into a movie. What are they thinking?

And sure, if the marketing makes it look as if it’s more of a Luke Skywalker movie, think the season 2 The Mandalorian finale or the Luke episode on The Book of Boba Fett, it could convince people to at least give the movie a chance. But the question remains how much prior knowledge would be required to even understand what is happening or in turn how to convince audiences that no prior knowledge is required. And that could always be a major hurdle, unless they kind of reintroduce things already seen in the various shows so the movie makes more sense to casual audiences, especially worldwide. It is certainly not impossible for a Mandalorian movie to be successful, but the chances of it performing on the level of Solo, or maybe even The Marvels, are significant, and possibly even much higher than it being a big success and comeback for Star Wars in theaters.

And again: both Sneider and Making Star Wars are not just any people who make up random nonsense to get clicks on YouTube, both have confirmed industry sources and have been right about many, many things before. Could they be wrong this time? Sure. This is always possible. But chances are even higher that what they hear is actually considered at Lucasfilm.

I hope someone with some sense in them over at Disney will say “no” to a Mandalorian movie, and that person can only be Bob Iger really, since Kennedy still reigns at Lucasfilm. In my opinion it’s a recipe for disaster to turn a Disney+ series into a movie. What Star Wars needs at the box office is a proper reboot, a fresh start, free of any baggage, not something that requires yet more extensive prior knowledge. A The Mandalorian movie would almost without a doubt absolutely tank in Asia and if Disney is still eyeing that Chinese money (not that China pays all that much money to studios, it’s about 25%) they should consider that Disney+ is not available in China and no one there even knows what a “Mandalorian” is.

Lucasfilm and Disney must be in complete panic mode if they are seriously considering turning any season 4 The Mandalorian story into a movie. And to have fans wait more than three years between season 3 and the movie.

But what about you? Would you want a Mandalorian Star Wars movie? Do you think it would be a success? Are you ok with waiting more than three years for new The Mandalorian content? Or do you feel a movie could bomb almost as hard as The Marvels, yet another movie that was, at least in part, based on characters only ever seen on Disney+?

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