Since the launch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase 4 in 2021, Marvel Studios has been dealing with a bad trend seeing blockbusters suffer major weekend-to-weekend drops following strong debuts. This problem became serious earlier this year when Peyton Reed's Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania fell a scary 70 percent in its second Friday-to-Sunday, and there were fears abound last week that James Gunn's Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 would suffer a similar fate.
Thankfully, that didn't happen, as it turns out that the latest addition to the MCU performed rather splendidly in its second weekend. Check out the full Top 10 below, with the new Marvel movie once again on top, and join me after for analysis.
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 Holds On Strong To Its Box Crown, Dipping Under 50 Percent Weekend-To-Weekend Following Its Debut
When Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 dropped in theaters last week, things didn't go as expected. Marvel Studios tends to put out their biggest title of the year in the first weekend of May, but the James Gunn movie didn't quite live up to the franchise's standards and had the weakest start for a May Marvel movie since Kenneth Branagh's Thor in 2011. That was troubling to see... but the film has bounced back in a big way with an impressively low weekend-to-weekend drop.
After making $118.4 million in its debut, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 has brought in an additional estimated $60.5 million in the last three days. To understand why this is a big deal, one only needs to rewind the clock to this time last year. In May 2022, Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness got off to a much better start than Guardians 3, earning $187.4 million in its debut, but then it hit major trouble in its second weekend – the movie dropping a major 67 percent and making $61.8 million, a.k.a. a figure similar to what Gunn's sci-fi adventure made in the last three days (had Guardians undergone a matching drop, it would have made less than $40 million this weekend).
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 only dipped 49 percent compared to the numbers in its debut, and that's a huge deal for the post-Avengers: Endgame MCU. Since the release of Cate Shortland's Black Widow, the only title to not have a weekend-to-weekend drop over 60 percent following its debut was Destin Daniel Cretton's Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, which only fell 54 percent in the fall of 2021. Guardians is proving to be a much stronger performer than most Marvel features that have hit theaters in the last couple of years.
So what is making the difference? As I pointed out in my box office column last weekend, buzz is likely a major component. When Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania hit theaters in February, it received a lot of negative responses from critics (leading it to have one of the MCU's weakest Rotten Tomatoes scores), and it got an underwhelming "B" grade from CinemaScore. This has definitely not been the case for Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, which has gotten positive reviews and the same grade CinemaScore grade as its predecessors: an "A."
While it seems that audiences saw the chatter surrounding Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and decided that a viewing experience could wait until home video, the latest film from Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 is earning a reputation as big screen fun, which has led to audience retention in its second weekend.
Overall, things are now going solidly albeit not spectacularly for the latest Marvel Studios release. Not forgetting that this is a film with a production budget of $250 million (per Variety) the latest figures from The Numbers say that Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 has made $213.2 million domestically and $528.8 million worldwide so far. It will need to make about $340 million more before it outgrosses Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and about $242 million more to surpass the original Guardians of the Galaxy.
The timing of this strong hold at the box office is very good for Marvel Studios, as some major competition is arriving in theaters on Friday in the form of Louis Letterrier's Fast X starring Jason Momoa and Vin Diesel, which is wholly expected to steal the box office crown next weekend. How that feature's arrival will impact the run of Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 3 in the weeks to come will be something that we will keep a close eye on.
Book Club: The Next Chapter Isn't Able To Do Much As Big Screen Counterprogramming
Going into this weekend, there was a specific hope for Bill Holderman's Book Club: The Next Chapter. While Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 was fully expected to hold on to the number one spot at the box office, there was hope that older audiences not interested in Marvel action would flock to another adventure starring Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen. That didn't really happen, as the new sequel had to settle for third place and a $6.5 million opening weekend haul.
There wasn't an expectation that the new comedy would bring in a nine-figure sum from its first three days in theaters, but one has to point out that the new release made only about half of what Bill Holderman's first Book Club movie earned in 2018 (it too opened in third place, behind David Leitch's Deadpool 2 and Joe and Anthony Russo's Avengers: Infinity War, but it made $13.6 million). That original release ended up making over $100 million worldwide before the end of its big screen run – hence the development of a sequel – but it doesn't look like The Next Chapter has any chance of outpacing it.
As noted, we fully expect that next weekend will be dominated by the arrival of Fast X and its stellar ensemble of stars, but how will it end up comparing to the other big screen wins of the year? Head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for our latest weekend box office report, and check out our 2023 Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the titles set to hit theaters in the coming weeks and months.
