Box office: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3’ surpasses $500 million worldwide, while little else connects
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Many new movies were released nationwide over Mother’s Day weekend, not that you’d know it, based on how poorly most of them did, trying to take on Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3” in its second weekend. Read on for the weekend box office report.
After a moderately decent opening weekend, the conclusion of James Gunn‘s outer space superhero trilogy remained in first place for a second weekend with $60.5 million, down just 49% from its opening weekend, the best a Marvel movie has held up since the pandemic. Over the weekend, it crossed $200 million domestic with $213.2 million, but it has continued to do bigger business overseas, allowing it to cross the $500 million mark worldwide in less than two weeks. This weekend, it made another $91.9 million internationally to bring its global total to $528.8 million, with $315.6 million of that coming from overseas markets. We’ll have to see how well it holds up in its last few days before “Fast X” opens and takes away many of its large-format screens across the world.
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Universal’s animated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” continues to fear no newcomers, as it held up well in second place with $13 million, down 30% from last weekend with $536 million grossed just in North America. With the $674.5 million made overseas – $26.1 million just this weekend – the animated blockbuster has already passed the $1.2 billion mark globally. With its current domestic take, “Super Mario Bros.” has zoomed past Christopher Nolan‘s “The Dark Knight” to become the 15th highest-grossing movie of all time, at least domestically. Needless to say, it’s going to be the movie to beat for the upcoming summer releases.
The biggest new release of the weekend was Focus Features’ Mom-friendly comedy sequel, “Book Club: The Next Chapter,” but it failed to find much business, opening with almost half what the original opened with in 2018. After Thursday previews of $500,000, the movie, starring Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen, only made $6.5 million in 3,508 theaters, less than $2,000 average per theater.
Reviews were not kind either, with critics’ thoughts adding up to just 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, while its “B” CinemaScore does not look promising for the movie’s long-term legs, especially once Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” opens in just two weeks.
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The horror remake, “Evil Dead Rise,” dropped to fourth place with $3.7 million, down 37% from the previous weekend but with a running domestic total of $60.2 million in North America. That’s not bad for a relatively low-budget horror film originally intended for streaming.
Although “Book Club” didn’t take full advantage of Mother’s Day, the Judy Blume adaptation, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” had a better hold in its third weekend, despite losing nearly 1,000 theaters. It took fifth place with $2.5 million, down 23%, with a noticeable bump on Sunday included in the studio’s estimate. Still, it has only grossed $16.5 million so far, which has to be seen as a disappointment, considering how well the movie was reviewed.
Ben Affleck starred in Robert Rodriguez‘s sci-fi thriller, “Hypnotic,” co-starring Alice Braga, which came into the weekend with terrible reviews, but it opened in 2,118 theaters where it made $2.4 million to take sixth place. The audiences that went to see it didn’t care for it either, going by the movie’s terrible C+ CinemaScore.
Nothing else this weekend made more than $2 million, although any movie would only need a cool million this weekend to break into the top 10. None of the other new movies were even able to manage that.
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Instead, Lionsgate’s “John Wick: Chapter 4” continues to bring in business as a rare returning movie still only in theaters. This weekend it added another $1.7 million, down 18%, to take seventh place with $182.7 million grossed nationwide.
Of the other new wide or moderate releases, IFC Films’ “Blackberry,” starring Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”), and director/co-writer Matt Johnson, fared the best with $473,000 in 450 U.S. locations, but including the theaters in Canada (handled by Elevation Pictures), the movie ended up with $740,000 this weekend.
Sony’s live action anime adaptation, “Knights of the Zodiac,” didn’t fare quite as well, only bringing in $535,000 in 586 theaters, less than $1,000 per theater.
Howerton’s “Sunny” castmate Charlie Day did not score with his directorial debut, “Fool’s Paradise,” an all-star ensemble comedy starring many of his pals, as well as Ken Jeong, Kate Beckinsale, Adrien Brody, and the late Ray Liotta. Released by Roadside Attractions, it made $443,000 in 784 theaters, averating just $565 per theater.
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Bleecker Street opened Laurel Parmet‘s coming-of-age drama, “The Starling Girl,” into four theaters on Friday, where it made an estimated $24,700, averaging $6,184 per venue.
IFC also opened the drama “Monica,” starring Trace Lysette and Patricia Clarkson, into two theaters, one each in New York and L.A. where it also made $26,000, thereby averaging more per theater.
The Yogi Berra doc, “It Ain’t Over,” brought in $106,000 in its moderate release into 99 theaters by Sony Pictures Classics.
Most players in Gold Derby’s box office prediction game correctly predicted “Guardians” to win a second weekend, although they were more split on whether it would make more than $75 million or less in its second weekend. Most players wisely picked “Super Mario Bros.” to beat “Book Club” in its opening weekend, although picks for the next three placements were fairly spread out.
29 players went 6 for 6 in the May 5 box office game, although kudos to “Jason” for the highest point score with 104,184, having jumped on his two super bets in order to get 100 to 1 odds. Wowzers!
Next weekend, Universal opens the tenth installment of its blockbuster franchise, “Fast X,” so check back on Wednesday for our weekend preview on how well it might do.
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