Masters of the Universe is heading to IMAX — and Star Wars is paying the price. Amazon MGM Studios’ He-Man reboot confirmed a premium large-format release on June 5, stepping into screen real estate that was supposed to belong to The Mandalorian and Grogu for three full weeks. It didn’t get that far.
IMAX announced it is cutting short the Star Wars film’s originally scheduled three-week exclusive premium run, officially handing its large-format screens worldwide to Masters of the Universe on June 5. The decision arrived alongside an IMAX-exclusive poster for the film, featuring Nicholas Galitzine’s He-Man on a Sky Sled, pursued by Skeletor’s Roton vehicles.
The driving force behind the switch is a box office collapse of unusual speed. The Mandalorian and Grogu opened Memorial Day weekend with a domestic three-day gross of $81.7 million — the lowest Star Wars opening since Attack of the Clones in 2002 — and then fell hard. Its second weekend pulled roughly $25 million domestically, a drop of approximately 70 percent. By comparison, Solo: A Star Wars Story, which had a similar opening, earned closer to $30 million in its second frame. The film slipped to third place domestically, outpaced by two horror films — a rare defeat for the franchise.
The context makes the loss starker. Both films that surpassed Mando — A24’s Backrooms and Focus Features’ Obsession — were directed by YouTube stars and cost a fraction of the Star Wars film’s budget, upending conventional summer movie logic. Disney reportedly needs between $500 million and $600 million globally for the film to break even. With a global total of roughly $246 million through its second weekend, that figure now looks increasingly out of reach.
Masters of the Universe, directed by Travis Knight and starring Galitzine alongside Jared Leto as Skeletor, Idris Elba, Camila Mendes, Kristen Wiig and Alison Brie, carries a production budget of between $170 and $200 million. In international markets, the situation is further complicated: several territories are also replacing Mando with the Michael Jackson biopic Michael, which has been returning to premium screens on popular demand — an unusual reversal of standard exhibition practice.
