Jon Favreau Opens The Mandalorian and Grogu With 25-Minute Preview
jon favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu opened its Los Angeles IMAX preview with the first 25 minutes of the film, giving audiences an early look at how Disney is positioning it as a big-screen extension of the series. The same footage had already played at CinemaCon in April, but the May the Fourth event put it in front of a different crowd.
Los Angeles IMAX Crowd
Dave Filoni introduced the movie and told the audience they were in for “one heck of a ride.” That line fit the footage on display: the opening skips a classic Star Wars text crawl and starts instead with static yellow text that says Mando and Grogu are bounty hunting for the New Republic and hunting down Imperial Warlords.
The choice of an IMAX sneak preview matters because it is the first public read on how Favreau is stretching a television-born property into feature-film scale. The opening works as a cold open, and the movie makes that move immediately rather than easing in with familiar franchise ritual.
AT-ATs In A Mountain Pass
The first action sequence drops Mando into a snowy mountain hideout, where he fights through an Imperial remnant that says things were “better under the Empire.” From there, the film turns three AT-ATs into moving terrain: Mando and Grogu dodge the walkers’ giant feet, jetpack into a cargo hold, take control of the machines, and send the chase toward a narrow mountain pass.
Favreau then gives the sequence a hard finish. Mando shoots the fleeing Imperial warlord’s escape ship out of the sky before an AT-AT blows up, and the article’s description of the walkers as a “jungle gym” for him is not far off. It is a practical sign that the movie is leaning on physical-scale action instead of treating the TV series’ compact format as the ceiling.
Seven Years For Star Wars
The preview also points to the larger franchise gap around the film: The Mandalorian and Grogu may be the first Star Wars movie in seven years. That is the real business story behind the footage. Disney is not just selling a sequel to a streaming-era hit; it is testing whether the series can carry theatrical scale without losing the stripped-down momentum that made the show work.
For readers tracking the film as an industry move, the takeaway is simple: the opening 25 minutes show Disney betting on recognizable characters, a clean action setup, and a format shift that makes the movie feel separate from the series without abandoning it. The footage has already been shown once in April, and this Los Angeles IMAX look suggests the studio wants the next audience reaction to come from the theater, not the couch.
