Josh D’Amaro is now officially Disney CEO, but the early Star Wars numbers already show the same problem I’ve been talking about for years: too much franchise management, not enough event-level storytelling.
As of March 18, 2026, Josh D’Amaro is officially the CEO of The Walt Disney Company. That part is real. What is also real is that The Mandalorian & Grogu opened well below the standard Disney trained people to expect from a theatrical Star Wars release.
And that matters.
I want to be careful here, because a lot of online commentary is mixing opinion, rumor, and invented quotes into one giant sludge pile. I have not seen credible sourcing for the claim that D’Amaro publicly told audiences to ignore Star Wars financial criticism, or that he said DEI matters more than storytelling. In fact, Disney’s own public messaging has pointed the other way. In his first CEO communications, D’Amaro framed “great storytelling and creative excellence” as Disney’s “North Star.”
That doesn’t let Disney off the hook. It just means the cleaner argument is the stronger one.
The cleaner argument is this: if storytelling is really the North Star, then Star Wars is still off course.
The Mandalorian & Grogu reportedly opened to about $98 million over the 4-day Memorial Day frame domestically and roughly $165 million worldwide, making it the lowest Disney-era opening for a Star Wars movie. Yes, it had a lower reported production budget than some of Disney’s earlier Star Wars misfires. Yes, the film still topped the holiday box office. But this is Star Wars. Disney didn’t spend the last decade turning this brand into a content machine just to celebrate “technically number one” while expectations keep shrinking.
That is the real story.
What I think happened is pretty simple. Disney trained the audience to consume Star Wars like a streaming utility instead of a must-see theatrical event. After years of flooding Disney+ with series, spin-offs, side quests, animated material, and endless brand extension, a lot of people stopped seeing Star Wars as a cinematic occasion. They started seeing it as background content. Once that happens, you can’t just stitch that same texture into a feature film and expect the old box office magic to return.
And that, to me, is why this movie matters more than a single opening weekend.
It is not just about whether one film underperformed. It is about whether Disney still understands the difference between content supply and cultural demand.
D’Amaro inherited this problem, but now it belongs to him. If he wants a real turnaround, Disney has to stop talking like brand maintenance is the same thing as creative momentum. Star Wars does not need more corporate reassurance. It needs fewer assembly-line instincts, fewer safe extensions of already-exhausted material, and one genuinely fresh reason for audiences to care again.
Because right now, the box office message is not subtle.
People did not show up for this like they used to show up for Star Wars.
And no amount of PR language changes that.
Sources
- Disney leadership page for Josh D’Amaro
- Disney CEO announcement, February 3, 2026
- Disney annual shareholders meeting remarks, March 18, 2026
- Box Office Mojo: Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
- Deadline box office report
- The Guardian on the film’s opening
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