03 May 2023, Mumbai: This weekend marks the official beginning of the summer box office, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the final Marvel Studios film directed by James Gunn, is expected to gross $250 million globally. $110 million of that comes from domestic sources and $140 million from outside.
The fact that the threequel’s opening is expected to fall short of Vol 2’s 2017 U.S./Canada opening high of $146.5M has some industry insiders furrowing their brows. Let’s give this most recent Marvel sequel time to unfold before we start screaming threequelitis, which most superhero films are Teflon-proof against.
The third installment of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy has the longest running duration (2 hours and 30 minutes) and the lowest certified fresh rating (78%; compared to 85% for Vol. 2 and 92% for the original 2014 release). Advance ticket sales for GOTG3 have increased since the film’s reviews last week. At the end of the day, hardly many studios can lay claim to $100M+ openers, and tracking is always shaky when it comes to projecting their strength. The anticipated $100M+ opening for GOTG3 will be Marvel Studios’ sixth following the pandemic.
Sales of GOTG3 advance tickets are pacing at $26M and increasing. Last year at this time, Spider-Man: No Way Home ($260.1M) had the second-best domestic opening with $187.4M, followed by Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($60M in presales).
In 100 theatres on Wednesday night, there is an Imax preview of GOTG3 that also includes the first two films. That money will be incorporated into the preview on Thursday at 3 p.m. Thursday regular previews start at 3 p.m. Before a $56M opening day on Friday, GOTG2 earned $17M in previews. 4,400 cinemas in the United States have been reserved for GOTG3; these include 400 Imax theatres, 960 Premium Large Format screens, 2,900 3D theatres, 285 D-Box/4D motion screens, and 85 ScreenX theatres.
There are several reasons to be sceptical, including the fact that Marvel has not yet recovered in the market following the lifting of the unofficial ban on films starring its characters with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (several months after the release elsewhere) and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania in a February day-and-date bow. To be fair, aside from Avatar: The Way of Water, all Hollywood films are underwhelming. It’s not just Marvel.
The most recent event on the GOTG team’s extensive world tour was a gala at the Avengers Campus in Disneyland in Paris. On April 19 in Seoul, they also went to the premiere at Dongdaemun Design Plaza.