Empire UK – Issue 452 May 2026 – Empire UK

But with Episode 4, he became a global phenomenon. Because this was when the little green guy — in his snuggly brown coat, on the forest planet Sorgan — sipped the soup that launched a million reaction GIFs. His popularity hit lightspeed. The world was in his three-fingered hand. For seven years now, ‘Baby Yoda’ and Din Djarin, Pedro Pascal’s beskar-clad bounty hunter, have ruled the Star Wars galaxy as father and adoptive son. Grogu — as we now know him — has been inescapable, on toy shelves, T-shirts, tattoos, memes.

He soared through New York in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Next stop: the big screen. Even Dave Filoni — the newly minted Lucasfilm co-CEO, anointed to the franchise 20 years ago by George Lucas himself — couldn’t have predicted the mysterious way in which the Force moved on this one. “Did you ever think, watching Empire Strikes Back, we would see a Boba Fett/Yoda team-up? Where Boba Fett is, like, Yoda’s dad?” he grins with a big, booming laugh. “No! But here it is, and it turns out it’s a wonderful delight.”

So it has proven across three seasons of The Mandalorian (and a handful of other interconnected shows). Given the wild success of the series, it’s easy to forget that it began as a Disney+ experiment in late 2019, an amuse- bouche to the main event: Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise Of Skywalker.

Would small- screen Star Wars even work in live-action? Emphatically, yes. The tables turned. Cinematic Star Wars has been in hibernation ever since Episode IX. This is the way: every trilogy has been followed by a fallow period. But while Lucasfilm’s ever-shifting film plans faltered, the adventures of the Mandalorian and Grogu soared on streaming. The mission to reignite the galaxy far, far away in cinemas now falls to them. Just, with one important tweak. This isn’t The Mandalorian. It’s The Mandalorian And Grogu. “It was a demand Grogu made, and no-one could say no,” smiles Pedro Pascal.

“It was the only way to get him to say yes to the movie. He’s like, ‘Listen, let’s be real. The Mandalorian? And? And?’” Hold on to your soup. himself assumed it was just a rumour. Hearsay, off in the Outer Rim of Lucasfilm HQ. “There were whispers about a movie,” Pascal recalls. He’d dreamed of making Mando for cinemas ever since the show’s first trailer debuted at 2019’s D23, large and loud.

“I didn’t hang onto or listen too closely to the whispers, because I wanted it to happen so badly.” Next thing, the news was out. A January 2024 social-media post confirmed it: “The Mandalorian and Grogu are headed to the big screen.” Did nobody tell Pedro first?

For more than 50 years, our state-of-the-art facilities, placement opportunities, industry connections and sheer enthusiasm for storytelling have produced award-winning, highly employable graduates. At Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab, students don’t just study film – they make it. They collaborate on experimental projects, sound and visuals, getting hands-on to create bold cinema, documentary and video work that pushes boundaries.

Take Rose of Nevada, the highly anticipated new film from BAFTA-winning director Mark Jenkin, Falmouth University’s Distinguished Professor of Film Practice, which drew on talent from across the University and offered students a career-building opportunity. Already dubbed “a Cornish modern classic” by critic Mark Kermode, it has been widely acclaimed on this year’s film festival circuit. falmouth.ac.uk/departments /school-of-film-television Filming on set for Rose of Nevada ©Steve Tanner Images courtesy Bosena, ©An Rosen Wynn Ltd., The British Film Institute and Channel Four Television Corporation The production crew for Rose of Nevada included staff and students from Falmouth University.

Photos ©Steve Tanner. DIRECTORS SPILL THE BEANS ON THE YEAR’S HOTTEST MOVIES WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY Rian Johnson on that killer reveal THE RUNNING MAN Edgar Wright on reinventing the ending WICKED: FOR GOOD Jon M. Chu on Elphaba’s fightback PREDATOR: BADLANDS Dan Trachtenberg on the final showdown SCAN HERE TO SUBSCRIBE! PLUS GET ACCESS TO THE FULL ARCHIVE, OVER 400 EPISODES! ALL FOR ONLY £3.49 A MONTH MAY 2026 5 * Please note that your first issue may not be the cover displayed Empire is published every four weeks by H Bauer Publishing.

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Book Information

• Unique ID: ff39c574664fc8dc
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 64,917,751 bytes (61.91 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 117
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 291.54 minutes
• Total Words: 58,308
• Total Characters: 344,733
• Average Words per Page: 498.36
• Average Characters per Page: 2946.44

Most Frequent Words

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