Weekend projections: Guardians has an excellent second weekend as Book Club starts out soft

May 14, 2023

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will have a decline of just 49% at the box office this weekend, according to Disney’s Sunday-morning projection. That’s the third-best performance for a movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe on its second weekend, behind only the first Black Panther (45%) and the first Thor (47%). It’s also basically tied with the first Doctor Strange. That means it’s also beating every other sequel (of which there are many) in the Marvel universe.

Here’s how the domestic numbers look as of Sunday morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…



Now is probably a good time to dust off the chart I compiled when Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came out. It shows second-weekend drops for all movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Note that Guardians Vol. 3 is doing better, relatively speaking, than all the movies in the graphic below. You can click on the image to see the full list.

There are a number of potential explanations for this strong performance. It certainly didn’t have any direct competition this weekend, and arguably had more competition from The Super Mario Bros. Movie last weekend. Mother’s Day may be helping too—the MCU has been around long enough that a teenage fan of 2008’s Iron Man can have kids old enough to take to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 now. But the bottom line is that it’s getting great word of mouth, with a Rotten Tomatoes audience score that still stands at 95%.

Book Club: The Next Chapter is really struggling in comparison. It’ll end the weekend with about $6.5 million, which is a fair way short of our model’s $10.4-million Friday-morning prediction. As I noted in Friday’s column, the most conservative prediction based on the film’s preview numbers was for a weekend of $7.9 million. Mother’s Day should theoretically have helped, but it seems not to have done so.

Instead, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret seems to have benefited from Mother’s Day, and will decline just 23% in its third weekend, in spite of losing 29% of its theaters since last weekend. It isn’t earning enough to hold on in theaters for much longer, but it’s showing the kind of longevity that suggests it’ll play well on streaming services for years to come.

The other film showing legs, and probably also because of Mother’s Day, is Love Again. That too is having a last hurrah before heading to the home market.

This week’s several other wide releases are mostly coming up short. Hypnotic will at least make the top 10, with Ketchup Entertainment projecting a $2.335-million opening weekend. That’s a devastating amount for a film reportedly budgeted around $80 million. Knights of the Zodiac will make an even more paltry $535,000 from 586 theaters. Rally Road Racers and Fool’s Paradise haven’t reported numbers yet, but will fall far below the top 10.

The one other bright note is Blackberry, which will earn $740,000 for IFC Films, which is handling US distribution, and Elevation Pictures, which is releasing the film in Canada. It’s getting good reviews, and will hit the top 10 from a relatively modest 625 theaters.

- Studio weekend projections
- All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Marvel Cinematic Universe