Thank Thanos, the summer has arrived
For the eleventh consecutive year a comic-book adaptation will jump-start the summer box office, and of the ten prior, seven fall under the MCU banner. Making it eight after scoring $106M overseas, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will look to build upon the first by riding a wave of goodwill to a massive domestic opening. Releasing in ~4,300 theaters, expectations are high with opening weekend tracking $150M, and many anticipating a number usually reserved for films featuring Iron Man.
The first Guardians of the Galaxy was a box office stunner, shattering expectations with a $94.3M opening weekend. Great word of mouth would propel even further than post-OW expectations, giving Guardians $333.2M domestically. That is a 3.53 multiplier, the best for any major comic-book release in about two decades (excluding midweek openers). Additionally, looking at online metric such as IMDB, Flixster, Amazon, etc, Guardians routinely has the best audience scores of any MCU title to date. The combination of great legs and great word of mouth has in the past led to sequels that saw significant box office growth. See Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, The Dark Knight, and Despicable Me, to name a few.
So the Avengers-like expectations are not unfounded, but complicating this is it has been more common for direct sequels to decline, at least domestically. Examples of this include Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hangover 2, and notably, Iron Man 2 and Avengers: Age of Ultron. This is more conjecture on my part, but it seems that a strong marketing campaign that properly sells a sequel as upping the ante is a key requirement to sequels with beloved predecessors reaching new heights. Guardians of the Galaxy 2s trailers have been remarkably devoid of plot elements, instead focusing on the humor and dynamic of the team. Its an interesting strategy, though I would feel more willing to predict a massive breakout performance if the marketing promised an engaging villain as well. Another thing to consider is that, while online signs have been strong, they have lagging compared to the other comic-book releases this year.
As has become routine, Guardians 2 opened a week in advance in 38 countries, including the UK and Australia. These two countries have mirrored the tastes of domestic audiences the most, and so it is worthwhile to look at how MCU films have performed in those regions. Below is the compiled list from The Avengers onward.
(Remarks: All values are in local currency, to best avoid the issue of fluctuating exchange rates. AUS+ denotes the cumulative box office for a film after opening weekend, as many of these titles had weekday launches in Australia to take advantage of holidays. Some of them also had Thursday openings in the UK, but finding reliable data that separates that out for the traditional 3-day opening weekend has sadly eluded me.)
Code:
[U]Film[/U] [U]AUS[/U] [U]AUS+[/U] [U]UK[/U] [U]US+CA[/U]
The Avengers 13,288,146 19,305,652 15,778,074 207,438,708
Iron Man 3 14,090,713 17,507,260 13,702,836 174,144,585
Thor 2 7,209,749 7,390,813 8,666,322 85,737,841
Captain America 2 6,058,676 6,355,027 6,036,406 95,023,721
Guardians of the Galaxy 6,552,690 8,872,826 6,360,809 94,320,833
Avengers 2 15,700,805 17,105,520 18,015,774 191,271,109
Ant-Man 5,346,067 5,467,690 4,011,345 57,225,526
Captain America 3 13,961,714 13,961,714 14,466,681 179,139,142
Doctor Strange 6,425,701 6,470,554 9,291,181 85,058,311
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 8,585,968 15,612,331 13,060,000
While it is not a 1-to-1 relation, the correlation is pretty apparent. Complications comparisons with Australia is that Guardians 2 had an unusual Tuesday release to take advantage of Anzac Day, a holiday. Looking at the UK, though, we see it was absolutely massive: a 106% increase and when including the grosses on the May 1st holiday Monday, its four day total of £17.85M was not far behind Captain America 2 and The Avengers 2. This was well beyond expectations in the UK.
Ultimately, I believe the positive signs from Australia and the UK and excellent word of mouth of its predecessor easily outweigh the slight negatives of online numbers. Because of the latter, I dont expect this to be a $400M+ domestic performer, but I do believe it will comfortably outpace the first. Fandango has reported that it is outselling Avengers 2 through the same point in release cycle, and while online ticketing has continued to become popular (and notably, Captain America 3 had the highest presales of any comic-book film and Guardians 2 was not reported to be outselling it), this does suggest a big preview number is in store. From there, Guardians 2 should follow in the footsteps of other mega-sequels and see Friday business minus previews easily top the entire opening day of the first. MCU films have seen stronger and stronger Saturday figures, with Doctor Strange increasing 35% from Friday when ignoring previews. So expect a nice increase for Guardians 2 as well. All told, I am predicting a
$153M opening.
Beyond opening weekend, its worth looking at the performance of the first week of May MCU films that have opened over $100M:
Code:
[U]Film[/U] [U]Pre/Mid[/U] [U]OW[/U] [U]2nd[/U] [U]Drop[/U] [U]Drop w/o Pre.[/U]
Iron Man 2 $7,500,000 $128,122,480 $52,041,005 59.38% 56.86%
Avengers $18,700,000 $207,438,708 $103,052,274 50.32% 45.40%
Iron Man 3 $15,600,000 $174,144,585 $72,525,615 58.35% 54.26%
Avengers 2 $27,600,000 $191,271,109 $77,746,929 59.35% 52.50%
Captain America 3 $25,000,000 $179,139,142 $72,637,142 59.45% 52.88%
The second weekend decline, with the exception of the first Avengers, have been remarkable similar even as the preview numbers have surged. I expect Guardians 2 to land in the same 58-59% drop range for the second weekend, but level out better with its largest competition in the third weekend being an R-Rated film and then a fellow Disney release in its fourth. Reviews, while a couple notches below the first film, are better than the Iron Man sequels and Avengers 2. Wonder Woman will cut off its legs on weekend 5, though.
Overseas its first weekend was slightly below Thor: The Dark Worlds debut of $109.4M, but was missing key markets Russia and South Korea, muddling comparisons. Additionally, Thor 2 made only $55M in China, a figure Guardians 2 could certainly double. Thus, Guardians 2 should be able to cross $500M internationally, but $600M or more seems extremely unlikely.
Code:
[U]Predictions[/U]
Pre: $19M
Fri: $61M/$42M
Sat: $54M -11.47%/+28.57%
Sun: $38M -29.63%
OW: $153M/$134M
2nd: $63M -58.82%/-52.99%
3rd: $33M -47.62%
4th: $20M -39.39%
5th: $7.5M -62.50%
DOM: $370M
INT: $540M
WW: $910M
