GTA 6 and Star Wars Will Be the Ultimate Barbenheimer of Games vs. Movies, But the Winner Is Already Clear

When The Mandalorian and Grogu is released next year on May 22, 2026 – the first new Star Wars movie to hit theaters in six and a half years – and then Grand Theft Auto VI hits four days later on May 26, 2026 – the first new GTA game in 12 and a half years – which one do you think is going to be the bigger deal? And which is going to be same old/same old?

On paper at least, these should be two of the biggest pop culture events of the year – the Barbenheimer of 2026. A new Star Wars movie? A new GTA title!? Grand Theft Watto!!? And while we can guarantee that GTA 6 will be huge – it’s already huge – The Mandalorian and his little friend are actually far less of a sure thing.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and I told my Noni that I would eat pizza every day if I could. And I meant it! She was like, no, you’d get sick of it eventually. But man, pizza every day sounds amazing! You know what though? Noni was 100% right. Pizza every day is actually really freaking gross, and it’s bad for you, and it’s bad for the people selling the pizza in the long run because eventually I’m just going to not want to even think about pizza again for a long, long time.

And this is where we’re at with Star Wars right now: It’s pizza every day, over and over again. But GTA… the anticipation for a new GTA game has been building for years. And in some ways, that very anticipation is a big part of the allure of the franchise as well. It’s something Lucasfilm and Disney would do well to take note of.

It’s not that GTA has a bigger cultural footprint than Star Wars. On the contrary, everyone knows who Darth Vader is (even my Noni did, I expect; at the very least she got me a TIE Fighter toy for my third-grade graduation). But the GTAs of the world are still aimed at a tighter demographic. The reason something like GTA can make as much money as it does (more on that in a sec) is because folks spend a lot more playing a game like that than they do going to see a movie. Its success is not because more people are playing it than are watching Star Wars. But one must also consider the lasting impact of a game of this nature, the amount of time that it takes to complete, the replayability, and the interactivity versus the, frankly, old-fashioned act of watching a movie or show and then moving on.

2015’s The Force Awakens, which kicked off the era of modern (i.e., Disney) Star Wars, brought in $2.071 billion at the box office worldwide. But Lucasfilm’s hyperdrive motivator was already starting to lose some steam by the time the Sequel Trilogy closed out: The last new Star Wars movie to be released, 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, made $1.077 billion, almost half what The Force Awakens did. Star Wars was already feeling pretty commonplace after just four short years of its return to the big screen, and the numbers bear that out.

The Force Awakens actually serves as a better comparison than Rise of Skywalker to the last Grand Theft Auto game, GTA 5, since the game came out in 2013. That just lets us compare the amount of money the two properties brought in a little more cleanly since it’s just a two-year gap between releases. And even though Rey, Finn and Poe’s first adventure (remember them?) is also the fifth-highest grossing film of all time worldwide (not adjusted for inflation), its numbers still pale in comparison to those of GTA 5.

So about that: Released in September 2013, GTA 5 made a billion dollars in three days. By May of 2014, the game had sold 33 million copies, which would come to approximately $1.98 billion in sales (based on a price of $60 per unit, which is an estimate and doesn’t take into account sale prices, for example). I know – you’re thinking, ‘That’s still below The Force Awakens’ $2.017 billion and it took nine months to get there.’ But whereas The Force Awakens made all that theatrical dough in just a couple of months before leaving theaters, GTA 5 just kept on grabbing the loot year after year after year.

In 2023, Barron’s reported that GTA 5 had grossed over $8.5 billion since its release in 2013. And last year, publisher Take-Two revealed in an earnings report that the game had, at that time, continued to sell approximately five million units every three months. This is of course in part due to the fact that GTA 5 has been released on three generations of consoles over the years, and the revenue from GTA Online must be considered as well.

By comparison, the combined box office total of all the Disney-era Star Wars movies – The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, Rogue One, and Solo – is $5.934 billion. That’s, well, a few billion dollars less than what is essentially a single game in GTA 5. But the other money that the Star Wars franchise brings in is a little harder to track – Blu-rays, digital downloads, streaming, merchandising, theme parks, and, of course, its licensed video games as well.

Things get a bit opaque here because while having, for example, all the Star Wars movies (and TV shows) available on Disney+ exclusively is certainly a draw for potential subscribers, it’s also difficult to attach a dollar value to that scenario. Ditto the theme parks. Yes, you too can rub elbows with an ersatz Rey while at Galaxy’s Edge, and you can also pay $200-plus for a custom lightsaber to shut up your kid’s whining, but how much does that add to the overall take-home of quote/unquote Star Wars itself? (Star Wars games, meanwhile, can be hit or miss; for every Jedi Fallen Order success there’s an Outlaws that has a rough go of it.) Does all the Star Wars stuff in the world that people can and do buy make up that extra three billion dollars to put the series at the same gross revenue point as GTA 5? Maybe.

But that’s only one Grand Theft Auto game as compared to the entirety of the modern Star Wars line. Of course, GTA’s online multiplayer mode, with its new cars and interactive events, keeps players coming back over and over again – easily spending beyond the price of the game itself thanks to its in-game currency. (And by the way, why doesn’t GTA have a more extensive line of merchandise IRL? Where are my GTA toys? Why can’t I go to a GTA theme park in California, or even better, Florida, where I can get in an awesome car and run over people to my heart’s desire before buying a custom uzi!?)

Well actually, maybe that’s where the real difference between these two franchises – in the here and now of the year 2025 – can best be articulated, and why people rolled their eyes when, for example, the Ryan Gosling/Shawn Levy Star Wars movie Starfighter was officially announced recently compared to the incredible excitement that can be felt around any and all GTA 6 news. As noted, it’s going on 13 years since a new GTA game was released. Compare that to the constant watering down of Star Wars through streaming shows, announced movies that never happen, bad movies (and, sure, some good ones!), and the aforementioned ever-present merchandising that we’ve been inundated with since at least 2014, when the marketing build-up to The Force Awakens kicked in. There’s just so much Star Wars now.

And that brings me back Noni and my pizza dreams – dreams that were dashed (Dash Rendar’d?) when I realized she was right about too much of a good thing. Sure, sometimes the toppings are different, and some days it tastes better than others, but Star Wars is just always there now. There’s nothing special about it anymore.

But GTA… GTA brings me to a different Noni memory. Rockstar only serves new editions of the beloved franchise on the most special of occasions. It’s sort of like lasagna on Christmas! We didn’t get lasagna all the time growing up, so when we found out Noni was making sauce and lasagna was in the offing, it was awesome. The meatballs and sausage sliced up, the oozing ricotta, the basil leaves on top, the toasted Italian bread to go with it – just the best. And it wasn’t just the actual lasagna, but even the anticipation of it. Knowing that it was coming was almost as good as actually sitting down and eating it. It was a rare and special thing, like a new GTA game.

Rockstar also has a history of delaying new installments of the series – they will serve no wine before its time. The result of this philosophy is that when a new GTA title finally is released, there is a huge demand, but also the amount of time and resources that have been put into the game are clear in the finished version. With all due respect to the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, there was obviously no plan in terms of the trilogy part of it all. (One day Rian Johnson will say how he really feels about the 180-degree turn The Rise of Skywalker took after his film.) Audiences aren’t dumb; they can tell the difference between something that is rushed to make a date versus a work of art that is given its due time to develop and evolve as it should.

GTA 6 Jason Duval Screenshots