Anil Krishna 
Jonathan Millar 
James Oconner 
Star Wars: Starfighter Budget Revealed: Disney Is Spending Record-Breaking Amount of Money!
© Disney
Disney is spending a serious amount of money on Star Wars: Starfighter. Shawn Levy’s upcoming film, starring Ryan Gosling, has already racked up more than $226 million in production costs, and that’s before the movie has made it through the rest of post-production. The film is scheduled to hit theaters on May 28, 2027, and it’s shaping up to be one of the franchise’s biggest investments. There’s a lot riding on it, too. Rather than bringing back familiar faces from the Skywalker saga, Starfighter is telling a new story with a new set of characters, and Disney will be hoping audiences are ready for something different.
According to a financial breakdown published by Forbes, based on UK production filings, the film had accumulated around $226.5 million in gross production costs by January 31, 2026. After accounting for tax incentives available in the UK, the net spending stood at approximately $175 million. That’s already more than the early spending figures reported for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi at comparable stages of production. It’s worth remembering, though, that this isn’t the final budget. The movie still has visual effects and other post-production work ahead of it, so the total is likely to climb before its theatrical release.
That kind of spending isn’t unusual for a film of this scale, but it does put the pressure on. Space battles, elaborate sets and the visual effects needed to bring an entire galaxy to life don’t come cheap. The problem is that theatrical success is much harder to predict than it was when The Force Awakens became a global phenomenon and earned more than $2 billion worldwide. Disney needs Starfighter to attract audiences on its own merits, not just because it has the Star Wars name attached to it. And with a budget this large, simply doing reasonably well at the box office might not be enough.
Star Wars: Starfighter Budget: Why the Final Cost Could Be Even Higher
The $226.5 million figure only covers production spending recorded up to the end of January 2026. It doesn’t include everything the studio will spend afterward, particularly on the visual effects that are essential to a Star Wars film. Those effects take time, people and a lot of money, especially when the movie features large-scale space action. UK tax incentives also affect the final net cost, so the amount Disney ultimately spends could look different once all the accounts are settled.
The production filings offer a glimpse of just how big the operation has become. Among the reported expenses is a payroll bill of $17.6 million, with an average crew of 239 people working each month. That’s a substantial workforce, and it still represents only one part of the process. Once filming wraps, the film has to go through editing, sound work, visual effects and all the other finishing touches that turn a production into a theatrical release.
The comparisons with earlier Star Wars movies are interesting, although they don’t necessarily tell us what the final budget will be. Forbes reports that Starfighter has already passed the early production spending recorded for The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. The Rise of Skywalker, meanwhile, was at an even higher spending level before release. So, while the new film is clearly an expensive undertaking, it’s too early to say whether it will end up being the costliest Star Wars movie ever made.
As for the story, Starfighter takes place roughly five years after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. It won’t follow the Skywalker family or rely on the return of familiar characters, instead focusing on a new adventure elsewhere in the galaxy. Gosling plays Kade Auberon, a man with a mysterious past whose life takes a dramatic turn when he gets caught up in the events of the film.
Gosling is joined by an impressive cast that includes Flynn Gray, Amy Adams, Aaron Pierre, Mia Goth, Matt Smith and Daniel Ings. Jonathan Tropper, who previously worked with Levy on The Adam Project, wrote the screenplay. Levy, coming off the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, has described the film as a character-focused adventure that mixes humor and danger with the sort of large-scale spectacle audiences expect from Star Wars.
Keeping the story separate from the Skywalker saga could be a smart move. The franchise has spent years returning to familiar characters and periods in its timeline, and there’s only so much further those stories can go. A standalone film gives Levy and his cast room to introduce new characters and explore another corner of the galaxy without constantly having to connect everything to events fans already know. The challenge is making audiences care about those new characters just as much as they care about the old ones.
There’s also the question of whether the box office can justify this level of spending. The Mandalorian and Grogu, which arrived in theaters in May 2026, reportedly earned around $345 million worldwide. That’s a respectable sum for many films, but it’s a long way from the heights reached by the sequel trilogy. For a production as expensive as Starfighter, that comparison is hard to ignore. Disney will be hoping the combination of Gosling’s star power, Levy’s track record and a fresh story gives the film a stronger theatrical run.
Star Wars: Starfighter is scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 28, 2027. Its final budget won’t be clear until much later, but the early figures already show how much Disney is putting behind it. The real test will be whether Levy can deliver a film that makes audiences excited about the future of Star Wars without leaning on the characters and stories that got the franchise here in the first place.
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