‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ are contractually obligated to be here

Hi there, Popculturology readers. I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this week’s newsletter, you didn’t get raptured.

Were you able to watch Jimmy Kimmel’s return this week? Like, on actual network TV? Jimmy Kimmel Live! is still being preempted in my area, so I had to watch his Tuesday monologue on YouTube — a video that now has roughly 20 million views while the episode itself became Kimmel’s most watched episode ever, pulling in an estimated 6.26 million viewers. (Jimmy Kimmel Live! averaged 1.77 million viewers per episode last quarter.)

Happy birthday, Rox

Yesterday would’ve been Roxy’s 15th birthday. She was the absolute greatest beagle in the history of beagles, a distinction she holds even almost four years after her sudden passing. Roxy loved getting a fried egg on her birthday, so please enjoy one in her honor while you read today’s newsletter.

Book nook

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week …

• Contact (Carl Sagan)
• The Third Rule of Time Travel (Philip Fracassi)
• Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race (Mary-Jane Rubenstein)
• Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 3 (Jonathan Hickman, Marco Checchetto, David Messina)

NEWS, NOTES & TRAILERS

🍿 The Mandalorian and Grogu believes Star Wars fans will pay to see any Star Wars movie

Do you remember when The Mandalorian first premiered and it felt special? Here was the first live-action Star Wars show, complete with an intriguing protagonist, a killer score and the reveal that THERE WAS A BABY YODA.

But then over the next two seasons, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni turned The Mandalorian into a bloated collection of nostalgia bait (it’s R5-D4!), live-action versions of animated characters (Ahsoka! Bo-Katan!) and the stubborn insistence of not recasting Mark Hamill with an actual human being to play Luke Skywalker. There was also the odd move where Lucasfilm dropped the story of how Din Djarin and Grogu reunited after the Season 2 finale in The Book of Boba Fett, an entirely different show that Disney seems to pretend doesn’t exist. (Where’s the steelbook, Disney?)

Favreau, Filoni and everyone over at Lucasfilm and Disney will never admit it, but I’m positive that a planned fourth season of The Mandalorian was reshuffled into The Mandalorian and Grogu, an upcoming theatrical release that’ll be the first Star Wars movie since The Rise of Skywalker stumbled across big screens way back in December 2019. (Moana 2’s $1.059 billion worldwide gross showed that a TV-to-movie transformation can rake in a ton of money.)

Lucasfilm released the first trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu on Monday, and, well, um ... it’s a trailer.

I’m wildly impressed that the trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu refuses to say anything. Nothing about the plot. Nothing about the characters. Nothing about the stakes. This trailer is just flashes of the Mandalorian, Grogu and a bunch of Star Wars things familiar to fans of the franchise.

As I mentioned above, there hasn’t been a Star Wars movie in theaters since The Rise of Skywalker disappointed fans almost six years ago. It’s not like Lucasfilm hasn’t tried to make a new movie happen, announcing standalone films from Filoni, James Mangold and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy in April 2023, but more than two years later, we’ve seen no real movement on any of those projects. (Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter, anchored by Ryan Gosling, is actually in production.) Disney needed to get Star Wars back into movie theaters, and turning a potential fourth season of The Mandalorian into The Mandalorian and Grogu — no matter how rushed or bad or unnecessary it looks — did the trick.

This trailer has the bare minimum amount of faith in Star Wars fans. There’s zero hook to it beyond, Hey, dummies, you love Star Wars so you’re gonna love this slop. Don’t even ask how the Razor Crest is back. The record for lowest opening weekend by a live-action Star Wars movie is Solo with $84.4 million. I’m pretty certain The Mandalorian and Grogu is on course to open even lower.