Can Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Still Break the Billion-Dollar Barrier This Summer?

Back in January Screen Rant offered the very bullish prediction that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 would gross $1.2 billion at the box office.

Of course, any such expectation has long since faded, and the web site now suggests instead that the movie might yet break the billion-dollar barrier, at best--which if not quite as good would leave it at least matching the gross of the preceding film in the series in real, inflation-adjusted terms, which is pretty good for a sequel, and especially an MCU movie these days (given their recent trend of sharply declining grosses).

At this point I have already ruled out what a while back looked like the worst-case scenario (an Ant-Man 3-like collapse for the film at the box office, leaving it with a take of under $600 million). But what about this best-case scenario?

Consider what it would require. Even with Guardians of the Galaxy 3 doing relatively better abroad than its predecessors (so far making not 55 but 60 percent of its money internationally) its getting to a $1 billion at this rate would require it to make over $400 million domestically. This would require it to make about three-and-a-half times what it did in its opening three days ($118 million) through the overall run. This would not require Top Gun-like legs, but still very strong legs indeed--considerably stronger than those which have already brought some relief to those hoping the movie would do well after a less-than-hoped-for opening weekend.

Should the film's grosses hold up as they have this past week from the prior week the movie would top out around $330 million--pretty well short of the mark, with even $350 million optimistic. The result is that, unless the overseas earnings get even stronger in some unforeseeable way (the movie came out pretty much everywhere in early May--China included--so no one's waiting on any big markets) this by itself suffices to make that performance unlikely. Indeed, as yet I think not just $1 billion but even $900 million likely to prove out of reach.

Of course, the upcoming Memorial Day weekend will tell us more about the prospects of this film--but I expect it to be more telling still about Fast X, and the weekend's near-certain winner by a long way, the live-action remake of the 1989 film that almost singlehandedly brought animation back to the top of the box office, The Little Mermaid.