With a franchise like GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 2 (Marvel/Disney), profitability isn’t at issue. Guardians 2 carries around $350M in worldwide production/marketing costs, and it will be in hailing distance of financial success by Sunday. The question is how the given installment ranks in terms of similar mega-competition and expectations. Preliminary numbers at Deadline put opening day for Vol 2 at $56M (including $17M from Thursday night), for a likely $140M weekend. That’s a solid if unexciting result for the traditional summer movie kick-off weekend at the start of May, below all but one of the movies that occupied that slot over the past 5 years (the 2 Avengers, Captain America: Civil War and Iron Man 3, with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 so much of an outlier as to require an immediate reboot), and also below 2007’s Spider-Man 3. The opening is far higher than the original Guardians and its $37.8M/$94.3M, but Vol 2 will likely have a very different trajectory, since the first in the series benefited from a sense of audience surprise and also basically had all of August to itself, while Vol 2 will face big-budget competition every weekend of its run. Vol 2 seems likely to end up in the neighborhood of $330M in the US, just about the same as the original Guardians‘s $333.2M despite the higher opening. That’s in keeping with the Iron Man component of the Marvel universe, which dropped 2% with the 2d chapter, while Captain America (+47%) and Thor (+14%) grew. In short, Marvel continues to be a model of how a well-calibrated franchise can turn giant budgets into safely profitable enterprises.
No one dared to challenge Guardians 2 at the multiplex, with the holdovers led by THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS (Universal), which was scheduled to finish the bulk of its run before Vol 2 arrived. Its 56% drop from last Friday to $2.2M was no surprise, and after a $7.5-8M weekend, it will wind up at around $225M in the US, below the last 2 installments, but making up for that overseas.
The holdovers least affected by the arrival of Guardians 2 were the family movies, and THE BOSS BABY (DreamWorks Animation) had a soft 32% decline from last Friday to $1.4M, for a $6M weekend as it heads to $170M in the US. BEAUTY & THE BEAST (Disney) was similarly down 32% to $1.1M for a $4M weekend as it continues to see how close it can land to $500M in the US. GIFTED (Fox Searchlight) held well too, down 35% from last Friday to $600K, on its way to $20-25M in the US.
Last weekend’s openings didn’t fare as well. HOW TO BE A LATIN LOVER (Pantelion/Lionsgate) slumped by 67% from last Friday to $1.3M, on track for a $5M weekend and a $30M US total that won’t match star Eugenio Derbez’s $44.5M for Instructions Not Included. THE CIRCLE (Europa/STX) fell 68% Friday-to-Friday to $1.2M, for a $4M weekend and a US total that won’t be much higher than $20M. BAAHUBALI 2 (Great India) was hugely frontloaded, and it plunged 81% from last Friday to $900K for a $3M weekend, although $20M+ as a US total will still be impressive for the niche title. SLEIGHT (Blumhouse/BH Tilt), in a smaller 591-theatre run, fell 67% from last Friday to $200K and may have a weekend per-theatre average around $1K.
3 GENERATIONS (Weinstein) didn’t make a ripple in a 6-theatre limited release, on its way to a low $3500 per-theatre average for the weekend.
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