Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was originally predicted to hit $120 million this weekend, but early numbers have it coming in at just $110 million.
Numbers have begun rolling in for this first week of the summer movie season, and after pulling in $17.5 million in Thursday previews, it is looking like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is going to open a bit softer than expected with just $110 million which puts it in the same range as the last Marvel film to hit theaters, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania which debuted with a franchise best $106.1 million a few weeks back. For Guardians however, if that $110 million sticks, it will represent a $36.5 million decline from the previous entry in the series.
Count me as one of the people who has been disappointed by the last few MCU films, so I can definitely understand regular audiences who are weary of heading to theaters for this newest comic book film, but this one is actually good! Don’t just take it from me or our own Chris Bumbray who gave it an 8/10 in his review, take it from the 96% audience score and the A cinemascore. For me, this felt like an old school MCU movie. It was a bit darker than we are used to in a Guardians movie, yet it still maintained the comedy, actual comedy, not the cringey, roll your eyes stuff we have come to expect from comic book movies. The good news for Flight. 3 is that next week sees no huge competition with the exception of the Ben Affleck/ Robert Rodriguez R rated collaboration Hypnotics, so with good word of mouth the Guardians will hopefully not see a comic book standard 60% drop off.
Chris Pratt does have something to smile about, as he will be the lead of the top two box office finishers this weekend as The Super Mario Bros. movie drops down one spot in its fifth week with what is looking for right now as an $18-19 million weekend. That would represent around a 55% decline from last week, which is a bit sharper than I had anticipated, but with nearly $520 million at the domestic box office and over a billion at the worldwide box office, I’m sure no one is complaining about this weekend’s numbers.
Third place looks to be Evil Dead Rise with an additional $5-6 million taking its total to just under $54 million domestic and over $100 million at the worldwide box office, making it the first film in the evil Dead franchise to hit that number. That’s pretty promising considering the producers have said they want to release a new evil Dead film every two to three years.
Lionsgate holds the fourth and fifth spot on the list with two vastly different films. First up is the severely underperforming Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret with what is looking like a mid $3 million finish as the film struggles to hit just $15 million after two weeks of release while John Wick: Chapter 4 continues its impressive run with an additional $2-3 million as the potentially concluding chapter to the hit franchise hits over $180 million domestic with over $400 million worldwide. Who are we kidding, with numbers like that, I look forward to Chapter 5!
It looks like the other new release of the week, Love Again, will be able to slip into the top five for the weekend with between $2-3 million. Not the best numbers in the world, but a top five finish is nothing to shake your head at.
Have you been able to check out Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 yet or has the prospect of yet another comic book movie not excite you? Let us know in the comments section and don’t forget to check back tomorrow when we have a full rundown on this weekend’s box office numbers.