Star Wars: Starfighter Has A Bigger Budget Than The Force Awakens
· BCPosted in: Lucasfilm, Movies, Star Wars, TV | Tagged: star wars: starfighter
Star Wars: Starfighter Has A Bigger Budget Than The Force Awakens
A new report says that Star Wars: Starfighter has a $226.5 million budget, making it larger than The Force Awakens.
Published Thu, 22 Oct 2026 21:17:10 -0500
by Kaitlyn Booth
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Article Summary
- Forbes reports Star Wars: Starfighter carries a $226.5 million budget, topping Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
- The huge Star Wars: Starfighter budget raises the stakes for its 2027 release after The Mandalorian and Grogu underperformed.
- Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter gained momentum fast after Ryan Gosling joined the project and pushed it forward.
- Star Wars: Starfighter is a standalone story set five years after The Rise of Skywalker and opens on May 28, 2027.
Star Wars is sitting in a weird place at the time of writing. Earlier this year, Lucasfilm and Disney released The Mandalorian and Grogu , and likely thought it was a sure thing, one of its several sure things, that it would be getting out this summer. However, like an omen for another movie that did not perform well in July, the first Star Wars movie on the big screen since 2019 underperformed and failed to connect with audiences. The Mandalorian was one of The Shows of the pandemic era, but since its debut and in the following seasons, people lost interest, and no one turned up for a movie. No one thought the movie would underperform, which is why Disney and Lucasfilm reportedly spent a ton of money on the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter. According to Forbes, Star Wars: Starfighter has a reported budget of $226.5 million, meaning it has a larger budget than The Force Awakens.
That is a massive price tag, and considering that marketing hasn't even started, it's pretty easy to say that Star Wars: Starfighter needs to light the box office on fire next summer to make up for those numbers. And by "on fire," we mean to the tune of $500 million, likely just to get out of the red. There are some movies that do that well, but members of the Billion Dollar Box Office Club are much rarer in a post-pandemic world than they were during the box office boom from 2017 to 2019. Disney stepped on the gas with this film once the pieces fell into place; hopefully, that means they think they have something special.
Star Wars: Starfighter Went From 0-100 At Lightspeed
The Mandalorian & Grogu will be the official return to a galaxy far, far away on the big screen, but reports about a film from Shawn Levy began in November 2022. Everyone thought the film wouldn't get much traction for a while, since Levy had other projects to work on, but then Ryan Gosling got involved. His [potential at the time] involvement following the massive success of the Barbie movie meant that Levy's project went from "eventually" to "right now."
That involvement was first teased back in January 2025, but no one confirmed anything, and it seemed they were waiting until Celebration in April 2025, which isn't a surprise. On the stage in front of a bunch of hopefully not-too-jetlagged fans, it was announced that Levy's project would be titled Star Wars: Starfighter. They also confirmed that Gosling had been cast and that the film had been given a prime-time release date of May 28, 2027.
In a press release from Disney, we also got some very vague story details. The release described the film as "a standalone adventure taking place approximately five years after the events of 2019's Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. … [Star Wars: Starfighter] is an entirely new adventure featuring all-new characters set in a period of time that has not been explored on screen yet." The release also confirmed that production will begin in fall 2025, which makes sense given a May 2027 release date and the amount of post-production a massive film like this needs. It was reported that Mia Goth had joined the cast in early June. In early August, it was reported that Matt Smith had joined the cast.
Star Wars: Starfighter stars Ryan Gosling, Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams. It is directed by Shawn Levy and produced by Levy and Kathleen Kennedy. The executive producers are Ryan Gosling, Dan Levine, Mary McLaglen, and Josh McLaglen. The script is by Jonathan Tropper.
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