Battle at the Box Office 5/8/23

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 kicked off the summer movie season for the year with a huge opening that shattered expectations and delivered the second-best opening in the Guardians trilogy.

Guardians Vol. 3 took in $118 million over the weekend, above even Disney’s projection of $114 on Sunday.  It couldn’t top Guardians Vol. 2, which opened to $146.5 million back in 2017.  It was above Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which opened in February with $106.1 million but was also well below Wakanda Forever and Thor: Love and Thunder from last year.  The next week or two will give us a better idea of if Marvel fatigue has truly set in or if Guardians Vol. 3 will have better legs than Quantumania, which fell off a cliff in its second weekend.  The movie does have an A Cinemascore, which is one of the better ratings for recent MCU movies, with Love and Thunder getting a B+ and Quantumania getting a B.  Worldwide, Guardians Vol. 3 has taken in $289.3 million.

After dominating the last few weeks, The Super Mario Bros. Movie dropped to a distant second but still took in $18.5 million.  It now has $518 million domestically and $1.16 billion worldwide. It has passed Minions and is now the highest-grossing Illumination movie of all time and it’s currently 24th on the all-time worldwide chart, behind Iron Man 3.

Evil Dead Rise dropped to third with another $5.8 million.  It has $54.2 million domestically and $114.9 million, the first movie in the Evil Dead franchise to break over $100 million worldwide.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and Love Again rounded out the top 5.  The Judy Blume holdover managed to keep the new romantic comedy at bay, as Love Again opened to a disappointing $2.4 million, which seems to be another nail in the coffin of theatrically released romcoms and makes it seems like audiences have either been trained or would prefer to see them at home on streaming.

Further down the list, despite dropping 67%, Sisu managed to stay in 10th place with another $1 million, bringing it to $5.5 million domestically and $7.9 million worldwide.  Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania also surged to a 6352% increase from last weekend, as it was paired with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 at a number of drive-in theaters as a double feature.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 also took the per-theater average with $26,610 in each of the 4,450 theaters it was playing in over the weekend.