Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 opens lower than other recent MCU sequels, but good word of mouth could mean better legs than usual.
(Yes, I'm late again. Hopefully, I'll get caught up with these this week)
Nine years later, it's hard to clarify just how much of a risk the first Guardians of the Galaxy was. The MCU was going gangbusters, of course, but prior to Guardians, there had only been four characters who had headlined their own movie. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and Thor were all reasonably well known before their movies, and all were played by experienced movie stars. The Guardians, however, had been featured primarily in one short-lived comic book, and had only made a few one-shot appearances in various Marvel animated shows. While there were a number of well-known actors involved in the movie, they were either under tons of makeup, were essentially cameos, or were only voice-over. The lead was a guy best known for being the comic relief sidekick on a long-running but underwatched sitcom. This was both much more comic in tone than the other MCU entries and much more sci-fi based, with no chance of a crossover from one of the more familiar heroes from the MCU.
As it turned out, there was no need to worry. Guardians launched in August 2014 with an almost-identical opening to that April's Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and would go on to outgross Cap by nearly $75 million. The sequel would be the highest-grossing MCU film of 2017, no small feat considering the competition was Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok. So Volume 3 should have been a slam dunk.
But as audiences finally seem to begin to tire of the endless Marvel product coming down the pike, Volume 3 opened to the somewhat disappointing $118.4 million, only $12 million more than Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opened to back in February, and a long way off the openings of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And yet...word of mouth is strong. So strong that the film ended up overshooting its initial Sunday estimates by over $4 million. Could this be on the cusp of a run like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, another franchise cog that opened worse than expected but had a long, word-of-mouth-feuled run? It is too early to tell, but if it does, it wouldn't be a big surprise.
The arrival of Guardians had a rather deleterious effect on the rest of the holdovers, as it sucked up the biggest screening rooms, knocked a lot of titles out of multiplexes entirely and sent others to split-screen status. Even the year's reigning champ, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, found themselves suffering by far its biggest weekend-to-weekend drop, falling 55% to $18.6 million. It's hardly game over for the intrepid plumber, but the quarters are beginning to run out. Its total now stands at $518.1 million, and suddenly, catching Incredibles 2 to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time begins to look out of reach.
For a fright flick like Evil Dead Rise, only falling 50% from week to week is actually pretty good. The gruesome horror-comedy brought in $5.9 million for a total of $54.3 million. It seems likely to pass Cocaine Bear on the list of the year's horror films, but will likely end its run looking up at M3GAN and Scream VI. Still, for a low-budget film that was supposed to go straight to streaming, this is a major win.
The hope that Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret would prove to be good counterprogramming against Guardians fizzled as the 70s-set dramady fell to $3.3 million. Its 10-day total stands at $12.5 million. Margaret will likely head to streaming with a total gross of between $15 and $20 million.
At least it did better than the actual counterprogramming opening against Guardians. The romcom Love Again stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas as a recent widow who begins to send text messages to her late husband's old phone number, not realizing that it had been reassigned to a reporter (Sam Heughan) who of course becomes enchanted with her messages. You can probably guess what happens next. Co-starring Jonas's real-life husband Nick Jonas and Céline Dion (playing herself--she also executive produced and contributed five new songs), the film could only scrounge up $2.4 million, putting it in the range of Mamma Mafia and Infinity Pool (it even opened worse than last week's Big George Foreman--more on that one later). This one could finish under $5 million.
Continuing to bang away is John Wick: Chapter 4, which took in $2.4 million for $180.1 million. With Guardians of the Galaxy here, Guardians of the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves seems completely superfluous, as it looted $1.5 million for a disappointing $90.9 million.
Continuing to edge closer to House of Gucci, the highest-grossing pandemic-era biopic not involving Elvis Presley, Air ran off with $1.4 million to bring its total to $50.2 million. Nearly MIA this weekend was Guy Ritchie's The Covenant, which made $1.2 million for a total of $14.8 million. Rounding out the Top 10 is Finnish action thriller Sisu, which brought in $1.1 million for a ten-day total of $5.6 million, not a huge amount, but a lot more than a Finnish action thriller can reasonably expect to earn in North America.
Outside the Top Ten, last week's flop biopic Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight of the World suffered by being reduced to only one or two shows a day at most theaters that were showing it. Its ten-day gross is $4.6 million.
The second weekend of summer rarely has any major openings, as most titles want to steer clear of the summer opener (not to mention Mother's Day). The biggest release is Book Club: The Next Chapter, a sequel to the sleeper 2018 hit, that sends its quartet of stars (Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen, and Jane Fonda, in her second comic vehicle of the year about a quartet of elderly woman) to Italy. The only other opening of note is Hypnotic, a thriller starring Ben Affleck being released by tiny Ketchup Entertainment (why that name, I don't know). Neither will come within light years of Guardians, though if Book Club can match the original's $13.6 million opening, it could take second place from Mario. We'll find out next week.
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