How Imagineering Rebuilt Smugglers Run for Mandalorian and Grogu — Unreal Engine 5 and Real Guest Choice

Walt Disney Imagineering’s Asa Kalama details how Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run was rebuilt on Unreal Engine 5 with new Nvidia hardware to support branching paths and three planetary destinations — launching May 22 alongside Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, in close collaboration with Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni.

When Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives in theaters and IMAX on May 22, guests at Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort won't need to wait to extend the story. On the same day, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at both resorts updates with a brand-new mission featuring Din Djarin and Grogu — backed by an Unreal Engine 5 upgrade that lets flight crews choose their own adventure for the first time.

Collaborating With Lucasfilm to Extend the Story

The brief from the start was to expand the film's world rather than retell it. Asa Kalama, Executive, Creative & Interactive Experiences at Walt Disney Imagineering, framed the philosophy:

"As we think about developing experiences for the parks, we like to find opportunities to not just retell the exact same story that you might have seen on screen, but use this as an opportunity to extend that story. It's an inherently unique medium. It's the physical world. And so we try to lean into the things that it does best." — Asa Kalama

Conversations started early. Imagineers sat down with The Mandalorian and Grogu director Jon Favreau and Lucasfilm President and Chief Creative Officer Dave Filoni, talking story before getting anywhere near technical design.

"Before we got into any real technical development or detailed experiential design, we spent a lot of time just talking through story." — Asa Kalama

Those discussions centered on iconic Star Wars locations, character relationships, and how Hondo Ohnaka frames the in-park adventure within Galaxy's Edge. The result, per Kalama, is a mission that "feels connected to the film while still standing on its own" — guests aren't replaying what they just watched at the cinema, they're stepping into a complementary adventure.

"We had to do all this really fun, narrative work to understand how all these things connect, and how they all feel like they're a part of one broad cohesive story, and that the adventures that you're having in park could conceivably be things that are happening… just off camera from the film." — Asa Kalama

The day-and-date launch sharpens the appeal: see the film at the theater in the morning, ride the Falcon at the park in the afternoon. Kalama notes that this is the first time ever Disney has aligned a film debut with the same-day update of a major park attraction in this way.

Technology That Puts Choice in the Pilot's Seat

Behind the scenes, the upgrade required a significant technological leap. The attraction's core systems can now support richer visuals, more complex environments, and — crucially — real guest choice.

"This latest mission, we upgraded the core technology that powers the attraction from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5. Along with all new compute hardware and graphics cards, the latest and greatest from Nvidia that really allow us to push the limits of what we could do in terms of visual fidelity." — Asa Kalama

Those upgrades made it possible to break out of the largely linear path the original mission followed.

"It was really important for us… to really increase the amount of variability, and sense of true control and agency that our flight crews have." — Asa Kalama

Engineers in the cockpit now choose between multiple planetary destinations, with branching paths and different outcomes within each one. That introduces a real engineering challenge: because visuals are rendered in real time at extremely high quality, the system can't simply load every possibility at once.

"We're actually constantly streaming the next set of environments that you're going to be navigating through. [Introducing planetary selection meant] entirely different worlds — Coruscant, Bespin, or Endor — on the fly, in a way that's seamless to guests but incredibly complicated on the technology side." — Asa Kalama

The result is an attraction designed for repeat rides, where no two missions feel exactly the same.

Walt Disney's Flywheel, Brought to Life

Kalama often points back to a decades-old sketch by Walt Disney — a drawing that mapped how films, theme parks, and other parts of the business feed one another creatively. That so-called "flywheel" is more than a historical artifact at Disney; it's an active blueprint.

"To this day, I think we still take that framework of how to connect stories really to heart, and continue to be the only company that… consistently actually delivers against that vision." — Asa Kalama

The Smugglers Run update is a textbook example of the flywheel in motion. Characters and stories move fluidly between screen and park, sometimes in both directions. Kalama specifically cited the BDX droids as evidence of that exchange — born in the parks, headed to the big screen in The Mandalorian and Grogu, then back to the parks in new appearances.

"Disney is at its best when we can be creating amazing characters and stories really in any format and then translate it into another." — Asa Kalama

Underpinning all of it: the idea that Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is somewhere guests come to live their own Star Wars adventure — and the new mission leans deeper into that promise with branching choices and personal outcomes.

What This Means for Disney Fans

As The Mandalorian and Grogu launches in theaters and IMAX on Friday, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run evolves alongside it — an experience shaped by close collaboration with Lucasfilm, powered by a generational engine jump from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, and guided by a creative flywheel that has been spinning since Walt Disney was personally walking the parks. For fans who have only ridden the original linear version, May 22 is the day Smugglers Run becomes a different attraction. And for repeat flyers, the math finally matches the pitch: every ride really is meant to feel different.