Guardians-of-the-Galaxy-Vol-2

No shocker here!  The number one movie this weekend was ‘How To Be A Latin Lover’ up from its number two spot last weekend.

Oh, sorry looked at that wrong.  It was actually Disney’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’.  The film had already opened last weekend in a number of foreign regions to great numbers and word-of-mouth.  As of this writing, it appears that ‘GotGV2’ will wind up making between $142.3M-$146.8M.  Is it possible that it could actually finish up with $150M?  It’s possible, but it would need to make $42.7M by the end of Sunday night, which would be $300K more than ‘Captain America: Civil War’ made on its opening Sunday this weekend last year.  (It will fall short of ‘Civil Wars’ entire opening weekend, $174.1M).

Impressively, ever since studios began adding their Thursday numbers to Friday, that resulted in the Saturday numbers looking like a decline.  (Which some interpret as the movie not being so good.  Because why else would the numbers go down?)  When you look at the REAL Friday and Saturday numbers, it was actually up 30%.  That’s actually better than the increase for ‘Civil War’ which spiked 21%.  So… it could still hit that $150M mark.

But even so, it would fall behind ‘Avengers’ ($207.4M), ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ ($191.2M), ‘Captain America: Civil War’ ($179.1M), ‘Iron Man 3′($174.1M), and ‘Spider-Man 3′($151.1M).  All movies are based on Marvel Comics characters, but ‘Spider-Man 3’ was released by Sony rather than Marvel Studios.

The ‘Guardians’ cast are really stumping for their film with the entire cast– even Sylvester Stallone— plus director James Gunn heavily engaging fans on social media and posting numerous videos.  Chris Pratt is “all Guardians all the time” and made a point to speak to every reporter at the premiere.

Here is the Top Five:

  1. The Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (Disney/Marvel Studios) – $142.3M-$146.8M
  2. The Fate Of The Furious (Universal) – $8.6M
  3. The Boss Baby (20th Century Fox) $6M
  4. How To Be A Latin Lover (Pantelion/Lionsgate) -$5M
  5. Beauty and the Beast (Disney) – $4.8M

Regardless of whether or not ‘Guardians’ hits that $150M mark, in comparison, every other movie in the Top Five was only in the single digits.But then again, most of them have been out for a month or more.

‘GotGv2’ will stay at number one next weekend.  The #2 movie could be Guy Ritchie’s ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ starring Charlie Hunnam.  Things haven’t been looking good for this movie and there hasn’t been much promotion for it.  But with the #2-#5 movies this weekend slipping into the single digits, it’s not going to take much to beat that.

An unlikely piece of counter-programming that could actually top ‘King Arthur’ is ‘Snatched’ starring Amy Schummer and Goldie Hawn.

Doug Liman’s war movie ‘The Wall’ starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and (of all people) John Cena is opening, but I believe that is in limited release.

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Check back to see how things go.

Source: Deadline