Chris Pratt Remains Bulletproof
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume III has bucked the trend of every Marvel film since Avengers Endgame and had a respectable second weekend. It was only down 50% from its first weekend as opposed to the more standard 65% of the rest of the MCUs films. Antman 3 did much worse than that, but it was the worst Marvel film of all time.
This isn’t a huge surprise despite how many people seemed shocked by this turn of events. While I wasn’t big on GotG3, I was willing to grant that it was a good movie if not a good Guardians of the Galaxy movie. This was the first Marvel film in years that had positive word of mouth going for it. A quick Google Trends search showed a spike of interest rising above the first weekend.* And given how weak the opening weekend was a decent showing in the second weekend would appear unusually strong when looked at from pure percentage points.
It is currently sitting at $530 million worldwide. This means it has made back its $250 million dollar production cost (assuming it didn’t cost more, which I suspect it did), but not its marketing costs. It will still have to get over at least $750 million before it starts to make money, (more likely $850 million but that is my opinion only).
It will likely manage it, but it faces a significant obstacle towards getting to a billion, namely competition.
The LPF screens (Large Prestige Format) command a significant premium at the box office. Consequently, they are contractually committed well in advance of a film’s release. This occasionally screws the theater that owns it, last year they were having to show Wakanda Forever to empty theaters in front of LPF screens and right next door Top Gun was playing to packed houses in standard format theaters.
Next weekend Guardians of the Galaxy will be kicked off the LPF screens in favor of Fast X. The Fast and the Furious franchise does all right in the US but the foreign market is off the charts for them. I personally, am not into them but I can tell when something is popular, the FF franchise absolutely is and it will abjectly crush Guardians in the Asia market.
If you hate the MCU this is bad news but there is a silver lining, much as the looney left want to cancel Chris Pratt, Hollywood is not going to be listening to them this year. Besides, you definitely have The Marvels to look forward to and I guarantee you that film is going to leave a smoking crater at the box office.
Okay, I’m done here.
*Which I forgot to screen cap and it’s post time.
