Box office preview: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ hopes to launch summer movie season into space

With “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” dominating the entire month of April, along comes Marvel Studios with James Gunn‘s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” the third part of his outer space superhero trilogy that began with 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.” How much money will it make? Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

Gunn’s first foray into the MCU was a surprise hit, opening with $94.3 million and beginning a star run for actor Chris Pratt that has continued right through his voice role as Mario in “Super Mario Bros,” which just hit $500 million domestically. His Peter Quill aka Starlord was teamed with Zoe Saldana‘s Gamora, Dave Bautista‘s Drax with Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel voicing Rocket and Groot, respectively. The movie would go on to gross $333.7 million domestically and $770.8 million worldwide, enough to greenlight a sequel for 2017.

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It has been six years since “Vol. 2” and that’s a long time for a sequel, despite the Guardians appearing in “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” and then last year in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” They even got a Disney+ Christmas Special that focused on Drax and Pom Klementieff‘s Mantis last year.

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“Vol. 3” introduces two new characters to the Marvel Universe, Will Poulter‘s Adam Warlock and Chukwudi Iwuji‘s High Evolutionary, plus Gunn’s brother Sean Gunn gets more to do in this installment as Kraglin, paired with Cosmo the Spacedog (voiced by Maria Bakalova from “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”).

In 2017, “Vol. 2” opened with $146.5 million this same weekend, and if “Vol. 3” follows other recent sequels like last year’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Thor: Love and Thunder,” it will open with even more money. Albeit, there are a couple new factors, including potential burnout on Marvel movies as seen by “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which opened bigger than both previous movies but has yet to surpass its predecessor.

Disney presumed critics would be on board with this sequel, so they screened “Vol. 3” early to generally positive to mixed reactions, currently with a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s slightly better than the “Doctor Strange” sequel but not as great as the reviews for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which opened with $181.3 million. That would be a great showing for “Guardians,” but it’s more likely to end up in the $135 to 150 million range this weekend.

Offering what could only be seen as foolhardy counter-programming is Sony’s “Love Again,” starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan, a rare summer rom-com directed by James Strouse (“Grace is Gone”) that involves Jonas connecting with Heughan’s character when he inherits her dead fiancé’s old phone number.

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These kinds of movies have been hit or miss over the years going back to “When Harry Met Sally,” which benefitted from Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal being much more known commodities. The last few years haven’t been kind to the genre with many of them (like Jennifer Lopez‘s “Marry Me”) getting a concurrent streaming release as theatrical, only making $22.4 million in theaters over Valentine’s Day last year. Neither Heughan nor Chopra Jonas have much of a track record in terms of bringing people into theaters either.

Opening in roughly 2,800 theaters, one probably can’t expect much in terms of reviews to help get people interested either, as Sony has been noticeably reticent about screening their movies to critics in advance this year. That trend will probably continue until “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” opens in June.

With very little fanfare before its release, it would be shocking if “Love Again” opens with more than $4 million, although that could be enough to get into the top 10 with so many other movies losing theaters to “Guardians.”

Check back on Sunday to see how these movies do.

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