With Marvel Studios releases these days, the second-weekend hold is just as important, if not more so, than the opening weekend haul.
This was demonstrated earlier this year when “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” had a major debut, only to plummet almost 70% in the second weekend as the hardcore Marvel fans had seen it and the more general audience didn’t really care.
That hasn’t happened with James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”. Helped along by no direct competition, the film had one of the best second-weekend holds of any MCU title.
The film is currently on track for a sophomore gross of $58 million, a drop of 51% from its debut last weekend. The film will also cross the $200 million mark domestically this weekend.
That drop is on par with “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and better than nearly two dozen other Marvel Studios films. Its second-weekend drop was only beaten by the first films in the “Iron Man,” “Thor,” “Doctor Strange,” “Black Panther” and “The Avengers” sagas.
The news comes as it has been revealed the movie has broken the world record for most prosthetics used in a film, beating out the long-held record that has been held by “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” since 2000. The third ‘Guardians’ reportedly employed over 22,500 prosthetics, 500 wigs and 130 facial hairpieces.
Universal and Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is steady in second place – set to gross $13.3 million in its sixth weekend, bringing up its domestic tally to $536.3 million and $1.21 billion globally.
The film has now overtaken Minions to become the fourth-biggest animated film of all time and the biggest Universal animation feature of all time. This week will see the title come to digital platforms as a PVOD release. Past film releases have indicated a PVOD release has little to no impact on $100M+ openers once their box-office falls below the $10 million amount – a number the film will likely fall to next weekend regardless.
One new release this week was “Book Club: The Next Chapter,” which will come in third with $7 million, nearly half that of its 2018 predecessor. Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton and Mary Steenburgen lead the cast of the film, which hopes to snag those Mother’s Day dollars.
The other new release was Robert Rodriguez’s “Hypnotic” starring Ben Affleck. The sci-fi action-thriller bombed on release, earning just $2.6 million and coming in fifth.
Next weekend sees the arrival of “Fast X” to shake things up, followed by Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” the week after and big releases practically every week for the next two months.
Source: THR
