Star Wars: Starfighter finally showed its first footage at D23 on Friday night, and the trades are already showing just how far the box office bar has fallen.
Deadline’s comparison for Ryan Gosling and Shawn Levy’s movie isn’t Deadpool & Wolverine.
It’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Harry Potter spinoff that opened to $74.4 million domestic in 2016.
That’s an interesting number, because it’s actually below The Mandalorian and Grogu, which opened to $81.6M on Memorial Day before becoming the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars movie ever.
The comparison comes from Deadline’s D23 takeaways piece, which spends most of its time talking up Disney’s 2028 slate of X-Men, Tangled, Incredibles 3, Ghost Rider and Black Panther 3.
Then it gets to Lucasfilm.
Anthony D’Alessandro agreed with us and calls it “the one label which requires the most resuscitation” after Mando and Grogu stalled out at $345 million worldwide this summer.
Deadline says Starfighter shouldn’t be measured against Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine and its $211.4 million domestic opening, since that movie came with a proven superhero comedy franchise already behind it.
The better comparison, in the trade’s view, is a spinoff trying to launch something new off a much bigger brand.
And the example it reaches for is Fantastic Beasts at $74.4 million.
The Star Wars Bar Just Got Lower
Put that number in context.
The Mandalorian and Grogu opened to $81.67 million over the three-day weekend and $98 million over the four-day Memorial Day frame, below Solo‘s $84.4 million and $103 million to post the lowest Star Wars opening of the Disney era.
It finished with $345 million worldwide on a $165 million net budget, below Solo‘s $392.9 million, landed a 60% critics score, and Disney has already admitted it missed expectations.
Now the reference point being floated for the next Star Wars movie is $74.4 million, below the film that just established the franchise’s new floor.
Deadline isn’t predicting Starfighter will open to $74 million.
What it is telling you is how the industry currently views the movie: not another Deadpool & Wolverine-sized event, but a new spinoff depending on the Star Wars name, Gosling’s star power and Levy to bring people in.
The Fantastic Beasts Comparison Cuts Both Ways
The Fantastic Beasts comparison can actually be read two different ways, and neither is especially comforting for Lucasfilm.
The first movie opened to $74.4 million, finished with $234 million domestic and $814 million worldwide, and became a major hit despite being built around a lead character most audiences had never heard of.
Then the franchise fell apart.
The Crimes of Grindelwald opened to $62.2 million and finished with $654.9 million worldwide in 2018.
The Secrets of Dumbledore followed with a $42.2 million opening in 2022 and topped out at $407.1 million worldwide, ending the series after three movies instead of the planned five.
If Starfighter follows the first movie’s path, it blows past Mando and Grogu worldwide on legs alone.
However, If it follows the overall franchise arc, Lucasfilm has a much bigger problem than one bad summer.
It Lines Up With What We Heard At Comic-Con
Deadline’s spinoff comparison also lines up with what a Hasbro rep working on the Star Wars line told us at San Diego Comic-Con.
We were told Starfighter works as a standalone movie, but is set up in a way where it could lead to more, with the box office deciding whether that happens.
The rep also said everything he was hearing about the movie was good, that Gosling is heavily involved in the same way Ryan Reynolds is with Deadpool, and that Lucasfilm is really happy with Flynn Gray, the kid at the center of the mentor-and-kid setup Deadline also singled out in the footage.
That’s basically the Fantastic Beasts model: make one movie first, then build the franchise if audiences show up.
Between what we’re hearing from the licensing side and what Deadline is now writing, that Memorial Day 2027 opening is going to decide a lot.
The Good News: Deadline Loved The Footage
None of this means the movie itself looks bad.
Deadline says Starfighter looks amazing, comparing Gosling to his Driver character from Drive dropped into space across new sea-filled planets.
The footage also leans into the mentor-and-kid story, along with the drag-racing energy George Lucas carried from his teenage years into American Graffiti and later The Phantom Menace.
The question, according to Deadline, is whether hardcore Star Wars fans will embrace something almost entirely new, with considerable pressure on Levy and Gosling to deliver next Memorial Day.
The trade’s first-look write-up made the same point, noting Lucasfilm is going in a new direction after failing to take fans into hyperspace with 2018’s Solo, with Gosling and Levy now being positioned as the new hope to revive the franchise.
IMAX’s Rich Gelfond has already called it a throwback to the Harrison Ford kind of Star Wars, and the teaser, shown only to the room in Anaheim, opens with Flynn Gray’s character pulling the tarp off a decommissioned G-17 Imperial starfighter that Gosling’s Kade Auberon calls the fastest ever built.
D23 Had No New Star Wars Movie Announcements
Deadline also points out something else about Lucasfilm’s D23 presentation: there were no new movie announcements.
Lucasfilm co-president Dave Filoni told the trade that Adam Driver’s The Hunt for Ben Solo is not the movie fans are looking for, saying “the force is not with us in that regard.”
That also lines up with what we’ve been told: Disney is resting and resetting legacy IPs that haven’t performed, while our understanding remains that, similar to Marvel, a Star Wars reboot will happen.
For what it’s worth, the same Deadline piece also declares superhero fatigue is no longer an issue for Marvel after Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which is what we said weeks ago.
Star Wars: Starfighter opens May 28, 2027, over Memorial Day weekend, 50 years after the original Star Wars.
Gosling and Levy follow it with Marvel’s Ghost Rider in 2028. Also from D23: the Ahsoka Season 2 teaser brought Anakin back.
