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.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3: Revisiting the Ant-Man 3 Comparison

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has, since the climax of Phase Three, seen a nearly unbroken series of disappointments in various degree, Ant-Man 3's underperformance was of particular concern. After all, the earlier installments in particular were released when the pandemic had the global box office way down from the historical norm--such that the meaning of the earnings of Black Widow, The Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was ambiguous, while Dr. Strange 2, if not all that had been hoped for given the groundwork laid by the colossally successful Spider-Man: No Way Home and its opening-of-the-summer release, still outdid the first Dr. Strange as it took in, if not a billion dollars, then also not so much less. Subsequently, if in current terms Thor 4 did poorly next to its predecessor Thor 3 (taking in $760 million, against the $854 million Thor 3 made in 2017, and the $1 billion+ it made in 2022 dollars) it was an exceptional fourth installment in its series; while Black Panther 2, if seeing a worse drop (Black Panther 2 made just half what the original did in real, inflation-adjusted terms) was a follow-up to a particularly colossal hit that was in some ways unrepeatable (as a "first" held to be of political significance), and suffered from the loss of the original's star.

There were no such excuses for Ant-Man 3, given a relatively easy February release (as compared with the summertime box office its two predecessors had to contend with), and boosted with the interest of its being the opening act of Phase Five, all as the preceding films did not raise the bar all that high (Ant-Man 2 taking in not much over $600 million globally). However, its real terms gross ended up over a third down from Ant-Man 3's none-too-stellar take ($476 million grossed to date, against the $740-$750 million Ant-Man 2 made in 2023 dollars).

All of this seemed to bode poorly for Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and indeed, after its opening weekend I speculated here about what Guardians would make if it followed an Ant-Man 3-like trajectory from that point on (producing estimates of a domestic gross under $250 million, and a global box office of possibly under $600 million).

As it happened, the films ended up performing very differently. Ant-Man 3 had what seemed a decent opening weekend domestically, and then saw its grosses fall hard (70 percent from the first weekend to the second), while its international gross suffered even worse. (In the end, in inflation-adjusted terms, Ant-Man 3 made about a sixth less domestically than Ant-Man 3, while its international gross fell almost half.) By contrast Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had a disappointing opening weekend, followed by surprisingly strong second and third weekend holds, quickly mooting the worst case scenario (the movie's domestic gross is already well past $250 million now); while in relative terms it did better overseas (producing a 60/40 international/domestic split, versus the 55/45 split seen with Guardians of the Galaxy 2).*

The strong legs in the domestic market, and the relatively robust international performance, will mean that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will, gross-wise, hold up relatively better to the preceding film in its series than Ant-Man 3 did. Indeed, I suspect its final, inflation-adjusted gross will be a fifth or less down from what the second installment did (with this split a bit differently, the movie about three-tenths down in the domestic market, and just a tenth down internationally, from that mark).

Still, if this is grounds for a sigh of relief on the part of Guardians' backers (a gross of $800 million+ is a lot better than <$600 million), it confirms the general downward trend in the grosses, and profitability, of the MCU, which may be expected to continue rather than reverse (even as some films do better than others). This certainly seems the case with Captain Marvel 2, like Black Panther 2 a follow-up to a film whose success may be unrepeatable (as a politically significant "first," and having hit theaters mere weeks before the highly anticipated Avengers: Endgame), presaging a particularly severe drop, which may be worsened by the headwinds it faces (which I have written enough about previously to not bother belaboring here)--such that I would think it lucky to do as well as Guardians, with all that implies for the MCU's fortunes.

* The 12 days following Ant-Man 3's opening weekend saw it boost its initial three-day gross a mere 76 percent in the domestic market (from $106 to $187 million). By contrast Guardians of the Galaxy 3 increased its gross over its opening weekend take by a much better 125 percent over the same period (from $118 to $267 million, already beating out Ant-Man 3's final domestic take by $50 million, with a good deal more to come).

Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Third Weekend: How Did it Do at the Box Office? (Oh, and What About That Fast X?)

Guardians of the Galaxy 3's third weekend performance has been in line with last week's predictions--another good hold enabling the movie to take in another $30 million at the domestic box office, raising its total here to $267 million. Meanwhile the movie's global gross is about $659 million according to the current estimate.

Thus the pattern evident last week remains evident now: after what seemed to many a weak opening, reasonably strong legs that compensated for it at home, while relative to the past films in the series Guardians of the Galaxy 3 has benefited from a slightly higher intake of money internationally (more like 60 percent than 55-57 percent of its money coming from foreign markets thus far).

At this point the movie is all but certain to finish up north of $300 million domestically, and $700 million globally--and north even of the $750 million I had thought it would not get much past. Indeed, my prior prediction of something around $330 million domestically and $825 million globally still seems to me reasonably optimistic.

A pleasant surprise after the plummeting expectations in the weeks preceding the movie's release, and the opening weekend (which had me speculating about Ant-Man 3-based worst-case scenarios of a sub-$600 million global take, now quite moot) what I said earlier about that performance also seems true. If a better outcome relative to its predecessors than other recent Marvel releases have seen it is still something of a comedown from the last two, especially when we adjust the figures for inflation--the two Guardians of the Galaxy films $1 billion hits in 2023 dollars, a mark of which its 2023 follow-up will almost certainly fall well short. Accordingly those hoping to see the Marvel Cinematic Universe collapse at the box office may not be able to gloat the way they might have thought a couple of weeks ago--but at the same time the mega-franchise's backers and supporters are reminded that they have no grounds for complacency, that profits are falling for a now aging franchise showing signs of weariness, even as, with Phase Five less than inspiring, the studio management cries "To Phase Six. And beyond!"

The story does not seem dissimilar for Fast X. The movie took in $67 million at the North American box office--near the upper end of the range predicted for it, but no better than that--while doing better overseas, with an impressive $320 million gross. Thus far I see no reason to change my prediction (a North American take in the $160-$175 million range, a global take in the vicinity of $800 million).

Meanwhile The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which on top of an extraordinary debut ($225 million racked up in its first six days) has shown extraordinary staying power at the box office, has continued to do so by taking in another $10 million to remain at #3 in its seventh weekend--confirming the expectations that this will be Chris Pratt's highest-grossing movie this year, and likely exceed the earnings of any live-action movie this year (with, in the wake of Indiana Jones 5's always uncertain and perhaps dimming prospects, a real possibility that none of these will break the $1 billion barrier Mario and friends broke so easily and quickly).

Is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Going to Be the No Time to Die of the Indiana Jones Series?

The kind of adventure Indiana Jones represented when he first appeared, was, like Star Wars, a throwback to adventure serials and World War II movies in a time when people who grew up on the stuff were a significant demographic--and imbued with a nostalgia for that content as strong as the nostalgia for the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, the '80s were to be in later decades. (Certainly reading through the classics of spy fiction I was struck again and again by how much World War II stuff we got in the 1970s.)

There was less of that about in subsequent decades, in which Indiana Jones-type period adventure looked more anomalous--in part because the fashion for such adventure Indiana Jones started proved a lot less durable than the fashionability for outer space and sci-fi action-adventure Star Wars started (which has since had ups and downs, but never really disappeared), while in 1989 the heroes literally riding off into the sunset, such that Indy was no longer around to keep propping it up the way new Star Wars films have. Indeed, anyone much under forty is unlikely to have seen more than one Indiana Jones film in the theater, if that, with that particular film unprepossessing. (It does not seem irrelevant here that the young are especially tough sells on period pieces these days.)

None of that takes anything away from the status of the prior Indiana Jones films, and especially the first three, as classics of the action-adventure form that did much to establish the genre as we know it, and continue to enjoy a good deal of affection from fans. But as the James Bond films that were a significant inspiration for Indiana Jones demonstrate, past glories of this kind are a poor basis indeed for keeping a franchise going from hit to hit, and it is not for nothing that doubts abound about how the audience will take this latest installment in the franchise. Indeed, it seems possible that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will be to the saga what No Time to Die has been to the rebooted James Bond film--a belated fifth installment by a new director that closed the saga on a less than triumphant note from the perspectives of box office, critics and fans alike, as the demographics of the audience affirm that the long-declining franchise's audience has aged right along with it rather than replenishing itself by winning new fans.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's Cannes Debut (Need We Revise the Box Office Prediction for Indiana Jones 5?)

These past few days I have had (as writer about this summer's films for this blog, at least) my attention on Guardians of the Galaxy 3's third weekend, Fast X's debut, and the Boxoffice Pro forecast for The Flash.

Indiana Jones 5's Cannes world premiere slipped my mind.

But it did happen. And the first reviews are out.

When I made my prediction for how Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (aka Indiana Jones 5) would do at the box office I went by what the prior films in the series made, the downward trend in their domestic grosses, the proportion of domestic to foreign gross. On that basis I anticipated a domestic gross of perhaps $400 million, matched by another $600 million internationally for a $1 billion take. This was about a fifth down from the series' peak with Raiders of the Lost Ark, so I set that movie's gross (about $1.25 billion in today's terms) as an upper end to the plausible range, and going by the same "margin of error," suggested $750 million as the range's bottom end

I also guessed that the movie's making under $1 billion was more likely than its making more than $1 billion because the film seemed to face a lot of headwinds (as an aged franchise with an aged audience that may be a tough sell to younger folks less attached to it and leerier of period pieces; cynicism about a fifth Jones film, a new director, Lucasfilm under Disney management; unattraction to the particular choice of theme, setting, personnel attached, be it having the director of Logan do the movie, or including Phoebe Waller-Bridge; etc.). Indeed, the film had enough against it that I did not rule out a Solo-like collapse (you know, what happened the last time a character Harrison Ford played in earlier years had a Lucasfilm adventure with Ms. Waller-Bridge).

Considering all this it seems worth returning to the point of comparison that Top Gun 2 has been for many of the more optimistic watchers of this film's prospects. While so far as I can tell the entertainment press prefers to ignore the fact in favor of a Rah-rah attitude toward the Top Gun sequel's success at the American box office, that movie succeeded as well as it did because it had comparatively slight box office competition in the summer of 2022; and the cheerleading of that media behind it.

Indiana Jones 5, like every other movie out this summer, was never going to have the kind of comparatively open field Top Gun 2 did. Now we also see that it does not have the press cheerleading for it. The movie's Rotten Tomatoes scores stands at a franchise low--very low--50 percent, a fact which seems the more ominous given that this was a movie that, given its shaky appeal, really needed that; and that, certainly to go by what I saw for the immediately preceding film in the series Indiana Jones 4 (the critics' score was a "fresh" 77 percent, the audience score a "rotten" 53 percent), the critics may be far kinder to the film than the general public.

Moreover, the specific remarks the critics offer regarding the film in many cases specifically confirm what many feared about the movie--that it is an unnecessary and mediocre, "box-ticking" addition to the saga, heavily reliant on the audience's fondness for its predecessors, even as it misses what people actually love about them, and even undermines them in what Nicholas Barber's review for the BBC called not just a movie that feels like "fan fiction [or] a tie-in video game," but a "gloomy and depressing" close to the series. (I might add that just as Mr. Barber's remarks would seem to confirm those who were skeptical of the director of Logan doing a movie about Indiana Jones in old age, those who groaned at the thought of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's involvement in the project are also likely to feel they were right to do so.)

So yes: even if some would still have us believe Indy's next adventure could play like Top Gun 2, if I was thinking $750 million-$1 billion was more likely than $1 billion+ back at the start of April (with Solo-like collapse, if not likely not wholly ruled out) my assessment leans still more heavily in that direction (as I upgrade even the prospect of Solo-like collapse, still unlikely, but less unlikely-looking than before these reports).

And I am not expecting that to change--at least, in the upward direction.

Still, we will see what Boxoffice Pro has to say about the opening weekend in response to the first evidence of the public's actual willingness to buy a ticket.

Is The Flash Going to Be the DCEU's Skyfall?

There is a tedious predictability to the marketing of reboots--aspects of which tend to be fairly distasteful. One is the denigration of the old version of the franchise for the sake of talking up the new one.

"Didn't you just hate that?" the publicists say in that wheedling way.

Maybe some people didn't care for it. But not all of us. The whole point of the reboot, after all, is to capitalize on that earlier thing's success--which means the affection people had for it, which is also why they are taking this line. Their affection is why the brand name they are cashing in on means something, but their affection for the old version may be a barrier to their accepting a new one. The result is that to effectively exploit that affection they have to divert it--from the old thing to the new one.

Of course, this is not a permanent stance on their part. Because after all this nonsense has been used to establish the new version the franchise-runners go back to mining the old for more coin, the value of nostalgia for the old is too great a thing for them to ignore permanently.

Indeed, just a short time after trying to bury the old version to make way for the new they are apt to use the fondness people still have for the old version to prop up the new, especially when it is not doing so well.

The James Bond franchise, which as the pioneer of the high-concept mode of filmmaking generally, and the action-adventure franchise as we know it in particular, has been on the cutting edge of movie-making and marketing in the past, remains so--pioneering this particular practice.

"Didn't you just hate that?" they said about the original EON Bond films as they tried selling people on the reboot. No, we didn't all hate it. But that was the line they used in promoting the new Daniel Craig versions, and the claqueurs of the entertainment press helped sustain that narrative.

As it happened Casino Royale ended up a hit. But the response to Quantum of Solace, at least to go by the prevailing narrative, was less ebullient. Meanwhile, with MGM in financial trouble (for the umpteenth time, but not the last), the next film was put on hold as people wondered about the survival of the franchise itself. ("Is James Bond dead?" Entertainment Weekly actually asked.)

The franchise-runners were shaken--while the 50th anniversary of the Bond series was coming up fast. And so they made the most of it, making of Skyfall a 50th anniversary movie in an even bigger way than they made of the Easter egg hunt that was the 40th anniversary movie, Die Another Day. They made a big deal about evocations of Bond's past--shifting away from Bond as practically a dude who came "from the street" to go by what Vesper Lynd said in the 2006 film to making him a Scottish blueblood with baggage about his past, and more baggage from the "family dynamics" of the present. ("This time, it's personal.") They brought back the machine gun-packing Aston Martin from the '60s-era films that one would have previously thought simply did not exist in this timeline. And they had the film run with a latterday version of Q and Moneypenny and even an M who is not Sir Miles Messervy, but is at least Miles Messervy-ish, so that as the film closes the office, at least, looks a little more like the one we remember.

Basically they had gone from "Didn't you just hate that?" to "Didn't you just love that?" And if your answer was "No," their answer was "Shut up, of course you did!"

All this is inconsistent, incoherent, insulting to the intelligence--and therefore, I would think, risky. And even where the audience was accepting of the manipulation I would think such comparative minutiae would, at most, matter more to the hardcore fans of the series, not the broad moviegoing public that watches the movies casually, especially the younger members with less memory of the older films, who probably would not know Geoffrey Keen from Robert Brown from Bernard Lee (especially given how, I think, people actually watch action movies). Still, it got people talking, brought the new film a lot of positive press--and when it hit theaters, for whatever reason (correlation is not causation, but all the same, the correlation is pretty striking), the movie overperformed, and massively. The prior two Bond films had made about $600 million each globally--Skyfall over $1.1 billion, which is to say almost as much as the prior two films combined. Indeed, averaging the grosses of the other three pre-pandemic films, or even those three films with No Time to Die, and getting an average gross for a Bond film of about $900 million (adjusted for April 2023 prices), one sees Skyfall's gross approaching an astonishing $1.5 billion instead--suggestive of an overperformance of 50-70 percent.

Selected James Bond Films, 2006-2021 (Current and Consumer Price Index-Adjusted April 2023 U.S. Dollars, Adjusted Figures in Parentheses)

Casino Royale (2006)--Worldwide--$606 Million ($911 Million); North America-$167 Million ($252 Million)

Quantum of Solace (2008)--Worldwide--$590 Million ($830 Million); North America--$168 Million ($237 Million)

Skyfall (2012)--Worldwide--$1.11 Billion ($1.46 Billion); North America--$304 Million ($402 Million)

Spectre (2015)--Worldwide--$881 Million ($1.13 Billion); North America--$200 Million ($256 Million)

No Time to Die (2021)--Worldwide--$774 Million ($865 Million); North America--$161 Million ($180 Million)

Unsurprisingly the franchise-runners stuck with the nostalgic approach, having 007 (once more) battle Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his SPECTRE organization in the sequel. As the numbers cited above indicate, Spectre was not as successful as Skyfall--but got a boost coming right after that film, and perhaps, from its evocation of 007 Past.

Right now the DCEU seems to be following a similar trajectory. When Warner Bros. put out Man of Steel, and still more, revealed the developing outlines of the DCEU in Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice, there seemed no interest on its part in the earlier incarnations of the characters whatsoever. The whole idea was establishing the new universe, without audiences being distracted, or encouraged to draw comparisons that might be unfavorable, perhaps the more in as they went in a controversy-stoking direction (Ben Affleck is probably no one's favorite Batman--and whatever the claqueurs say a lot of people were probably not thrilled with the fascist wacko incarnation of the character he was given to play that time around); and frankly, because the stakes seemed very high, Warner hoping that this would be its very own equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Of course, it did not all go as planned, by a long shot, the DCEU never approaching Marvel's fecundity with films, with those films it did get to put out there failing to achieve its billion dollar hit-regularizing success.

Indeed, Warner decided to give these reboots . . . yet another reboot (because studios no longer give up on franchises, or even let them lie fallow, they rush to reboot them because in this day and age nothing is more repugnant to a Hollywood Suit than a New Idea).

Prior to this all becoming official the struggling DCEU Universe's runners, like the runners of the Bond franchise, started seeing nostalgia less as a threat to their new wares and more as a prop to them. Thus did the decision to have Michael Keaton play Bruce Wayne/Batman as part of the last DCEU films, a Skyfall-like evocation of franchise past to aid it in the present. Indeed, such nostalgic evocation seems to be the best thing The Flash has going for it, just as it was the best thing Skyfall had going for it, as the press buzzes over it.

Again, this seems to me something more relevant to fans than the broader audience. It also seems more relevant to American fans than their foreign counterparts--for whom there may be no nostalgia to exploit, with the result that the gesture will fall flat. (Consider how the deeply nostalgia-dependent effort to sell Star Wars in China, which missed out on the original release of the trilogy, fell flat in another reminder of Disney's inability to understand and market its own product--"smartest guys in the room" indeed.) This is all the more the case given that, in contrast with the longstanding, vast, global audience for the Bond films there is probably less nostalgia for anything so specific as, say, the Tim Burton Batman films. Still, this is a possible source of surprises here--and if it (or anything else) ends up working in favor of The Flash becoming a blockbuster, expect the entertainment press to get more bullish still in its predictions about what the movie will make in its opening weekend.

What Will The Flash Make on its Opening Weekend? And Over its Longer Run? (A Box Office Prediction)

Seeing the way the buzz for The Flash turned so positive--the way the media has got behind the movie--I wondered whether the audience was actually responsive, and looked forward to Boxoffice Pro's long-range forecast accordingly.

Out today, it predicts an opening weekend in the $115-$140 million range for The Flash, on the way to the film eventually taking in $280-$375 million domestically. In short, there are expectations that--domestically at least--the film will do at least as well as Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and perhaps considerably better, especially over its fuller run. (Yesterday I predicted here that even fairly strong week-to-week holds from here on out would get Guardians 3 to just $330 million or so, about the middle of the range predicted for The Flash.)

What would that imply for the global gross? The bigger pre-pandemic DCEU movies (namely Man of Steel, Superman vs. Batman, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Justice League and Aquaman--all better analogies with The Flash today than smaller productions like Shazam and the pandemic release The Suicide Squad, especially as the box office continues to normalize and the biggest movies are as strong a draw as ever they were), made from 50 to 70 percent of their money internationally.

Between Boxoffice Pro's domestic range, and that figure, we get a very wide range for the possible global gross of from $550 million to almost $1.3 billion.

Of course, until recently the predictions I saw hewed closer to the bottom end of that range than the top--circa $700 million, which would not be far off the mark were the movie to do reasonably well in North America and simply match that abroad (e.g. take in a near-top-of-the-Boxoffice Pro-range $350 million, and make the same overseas; or do a bottom-of-the-range $280 million but make one-and-a-half times that internationally). Still, in the past DCEU movies have, if often seen as disappointments relative to the "Marvel envy" expectations laid on them, still done better than that in real, inflation-adjusted terms. In fact, even in current dollars only two of the six first-rank DCEU movies failed to break the $700 million mark, while all of them blew past it by a considerable way in real terms. Even the lowest earner here, Justice League, grossed almost $800 million when we adjust the dollar values of their year's release to April 2023 dollars, while in the same terms not one but three of the movies broke the billion-dollar barrier (alongside Aquaman, Superman vs. Batman and Wonder Woman doing so), as another came pretty close (Suicide Squad, with its $940 million+ gross back in 2016).

Selected DCEU Films, 2013-2018 (Current and Consumer Price Index-Adjusted April 2023 U.S. Dollars, Adjusted Figures in Parentheses)*

Man of Steel (2013)--Worldwide--$668 Million ($869 Million); Domestic--$291 Million ($378 Million)

Superman vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice (2016)--Worldwide--$871 Million ($1.1 Billion); Domestic--$330 Million ($416 Million)

Suicide Squad (2016)--Worldwide--$747 Million ($943 Million); Domestic--$325 Million ($410 Million)

Wonder Woman (2017)--Worldwide--$822 Million ($1.02 Billion); Domestic--$413 Million ($510 Million)

Justice League (2017)--Worldwide--$658 Million ($794 Million); Domestic--$229 Million ($276 Million)

Aquaman (2018)--Worldwide--$1.15 Billion ($1.39 Billion); Domestic--$335 Million ($404 Million)

Might The Flash then not do better--perhaps much better?--than $700 million. Alas, the DCEU universe is not just in decline, but on its way out, so that there is no build-up toward anything bigger and better such as likely helped some of the earlier films. It may also suffer the effects of bad press about the star, while facing a lot of summer competition.

I might add that good as its press is lately it falls short of the kind of cheer-leading I remember for Wonder Woman back in 2017.

All of this gives it more obstacles to overcome than the preceding films had, less with which to overcome them, and less to gain if it does accomplish the feat (such that even if a pleasantly surprised audience supplies good word-of-mouth it may only count for so much).

So let us let us play it safe and focus on the middle of the relevant ranges with regard to The Flash's domestic gross, and that gross' share of the global total--about $330 million domestic, with somewhere around 60 percent of the revenue foreign, working out to a global gross the vicinity of $800-$850 million. Recognizing $550 million as the absolute rock bottom, and allowing some room for error at the high end (rounding up from 8.5 to 9), $900 million would seem a reasonable high end to the range--so that $600-$900 million is the broader range I have in mind for the time being, with $700-$850 million the more plausible range within that, the movie breaking the billion-dollar barrier still a long shot.

All the same, I do not doubt I will have more to say about this in the coming weeks as more information comes in--with, in fact, one angle on a possible long shot already germinating into its own post as I write this.

* I took the film's gross and adjusted from the prices of the film's year of release (e.g. 2013) to the prices of April 2023 (the latest now available).

Will Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Legs Hold Up? (A Box Office Prediction About Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Third Weekend--and Fast X's First)

After a disappointing debut Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had a better than expected second weekend--its gross over the weekend sliding, at last calculation, just under 48 percent from the level of the previous weekend (as against the 67-70 percent drops in first-to-second weekend gross that the last three Marvel Cinematic Universe sequels had seen). The general expectation seems to be that this pattern will continue to hold, with Boxoffice Pro anticipating a $30 million+ third weekend that will raise Guardians of the Galaxy's take to over $267 million.

Assuming this to be the case, what would it mean for the film's overall performance? Let us consider not merely weekends, but weeks. In its first Monday-to-Sunday period after the first weekend, which gave the film its better than expected gross of $215 million as of last Sunday, the film took in about $96.3 million. Boxoffice Pro's anticipation suggests a $52.8 million take in the following seven day period, a mere 45 percent drop. Assuming the 45 percent week-on-week drops continue (so that at the end of the fourth weekend the movie has $297 million in the till, $313 million at the end of the fifth, etc.) the film will top out in the vicinity of $330 million domestically.

Where the global situation is concerned the calculation is trickier. Still, the film's earnings have been a bit more robust than usual overseas. Where the prior two Guardians films made 22-33 percent more internationally than they did at home the recent film, to date, has been making more like 50 percent more. Assuming that holds up the film's international take could be in the vicinity of $495 million. Added to the domestic gross that works out to a global take of some $825 million.

These assumptions are not without their element of optimism. (For all we know the bump the film had the second weekend might not last, the grosses eroding more quickly from here on out.) But they are still within the $700-$875 million range discussed here as plausible last week (indeed, near the middle of that range).

Expect the press to make the most of the $800 million+ gross should it happen, comparing it favorably with the grosses of the prior two films--though the reality would be more mixed. Today's prices are not those of 2013, or even 2017, and in real terms an $825 million take, or even an $875 million take, would leave the movie the lowest grossing of the trilogy by a not insignificant margin (the original Guardians made a little under a billion in today's terms, Guardians 2 over a billion), and it does not do to gloss over the fact. However, it would constitute a more modest drop from the gross of the prior film than has been seen for other Marvel movies (a drop of perhaps a fifth, as against the quarter-drop Thor 4 suffered, the over one-third drop suffered by Ant-Man 3, the drop in real gross of about half suffered by Black Panther 2).

Considering this it seems worth noting the possible implications for the next really major summer movie, Fast X. The Boxoffice Pro prediction regarding the film has broadened--with the floor now lowered to $58 million. Suggestive of a final North American take that may be under $150 million, the more in as the chances of its surprising everyone with even Guardians of the Galaxy-like legs are not great (a "leggy run" is by definition a rarity, and by its third weekend the competition will be thickening, with the most anticipated movie of the summer, the next animated Spider-Man, hitting theaters then), the film is admittedly expected to make three to four times as much overseas. Still, this would easily leave it under the $800 million mark--while the production budget has been reported as high as $340 million (which is to say, almost a $100 million more than a Guardians of the Galaxy movie expected to make at least as much). We now hear that Fast and Furious 11 is due out in 2025--but, barring the greatest studio bull-headedness about sticking to franchises even after they have ceased to pay, that combination of falling grosses and rising costs seems bound to have consequences for those plans.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3: How Did the Movie Do in its Second Weekend? (Testing the Predictions)

Last week Guardians of the Galaxy 3 made its debut at the box office. Even after a slight upward revision it was a weak gross compared with preceding entries in the series ($118 million, versus the $147 million with which its predecessor debuted, and the $180 million it would equal in 2023 dollars). Indeed, not much higher than what Ant-Man 3 made in its opening weekend ($106 million over the equivalent three-day period, as part of a four day weekend that saw it take in $120 million), the precedent of Ant-Man 3, and the preceding two Marvel movies (Thor 4 and Black Panther 2), suggested not only a disappointing opening weekend, but weak legs--with the second weekend seeing a gross some 67-70 percent down from that of the first. Meanwhile even a better hold (which Boxoffice Pro predicted) seemed unlikely to be much better than what the earlier, initially more warmly received, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 did (a 56 percent or so drop). Taking these two possibilities as establishing the range, and extrapolating from the opening weekend numbers on those terms, it seemed to me the second weekend would see a gross of $35-$50 million, with my expectation, given how things have been going for Marvel, inclining toward the low end of the range (under $40 million).

Looking at the movie's grosses on the days of the following week I found myself starting to rethink that, the movie holding up rather better than Ant-Man 3 in the post-Sunday period, and giving the impression that it would extend its lead. (After its first four days Guardians of the Galaxy was running 6 percent ahead of Ant-Man 3--with $127 million to $120 million. But after seven days its gross was running almost 13 percent ahead, with $152 million banked to its $135 million.) But I let my prediction stand--and still thought that if the movie now looked likely to make over $40 million it would not shift the result upward very much, never mind shift the range.

Instead what happened is that the drop (better than that for any of the other eleven Marvel Cinematic Universe movie (MCU) released since the pandemic) was under 50 percent as it made not forty, not fifty, but sixty million.

It seems that Star-Lord and company, if starting out with what looked like a bust (a third down from what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 scored in the exact same time frame, in real terms), has been partly compensated by a better than expected week after. Much will depend on whether this pattern continues. But at this stage of things the worst-case scenario I had in mind (an Ant-Man 3-like collapse after the first weekend, leaving the movie with $240 million or so banked stateside) no longer seems worth considering. Indeed, even if the movie were after this point to follow Ant-Man 3's pattern of rapid decay (which is to say, that it had 78 percent of its gross banked in the first ten days, with just that last little bit left to go) the movie would end up with something on the order of $270 million. And it would not take very much better for it to cross the $300 million line.

The result is that, as earlier anticipated by most analysts, $300-$400 million is the range in which the film is likely to finish domestically. For the time being, however, I still anticipate that the gross will be closer to the low end of the range. (Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made 64 percent of its money in its first ten days. The same would still give Guardians 3 $330 million.)

Meanwhile the overseas hold has been similarly decent--the film collecting a respectable $92 million abroad, bringing the global total for the first ten days to $528 million. Implying a rough 40/60 split between the domestic and foreign earnings, this more or less continues the pattern from last week, which suggested (in the reverse of what happened with Ant-Man 3) that the movie's overseas earnings were holding up better than its domestic earnings relative to its predecessor. Assuming that this remains the case, with a Guardians gross in the $300-$350 million range domestically, one would end up with $750-$875 million collected worldwide.

The low end of the range is not much better than the estimates made in line with the real terms decline of Marvel's movies (I estimated $700-$750 million in the weeks leading up to the movie's release). Meanwhile the high end of the range--if a good deal better than the pessimistic speculations we saw as the opening weekend expectations plummeted, and the first weekend did indeed prove a disappointment--does not change the fundamental situation. Even the $875 million still leaves the movie not only not the "big finish" some said it would be, but the lowest performer in the trilogy by a good way when we adjust for inflation, and by the same token, well short of that billion in current dollars mark of which so much is made. All of this would seem to affirm the view of the MCU as a franchise in decline--if a slower, less catastrophic decline than some had it (or hoped).

Transformers 6 aka Transformers 7 aka Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: The Opening Weekend and Overall Box Office Gross (A Box Office Prediction)

The curiosity about how upcoming films will do financially is, of course, largely centered on the biggest blockbusters, particularly those where a fandom has become impassioned by controversy--with Disney's productions, especially its Lucasfilm and Marvel superhero productions, far and away at the top of the list of objects of such argument.

Still, that is far from the entirety of what this summer is offering theatergoers, even when one just thinks in terms of the biggest action-adventure franchises. After all, this year brings new installments in sagas like Mission: Impossible, the Fast and Furious, and the Transformers, with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts coming to theaters in June.

In discussing this last one let us first acknowledge the fact that the first film in the Transformers sequence appeared sixteen years ago, and was followed by four more "main line" films within the next decade, and a spin-off the following year. Moreover, far from going from strength to strength the way that, for example, the Fast and Furious franchise did in its fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh entries (the 2015 movie a near $2 billion hit in today's terms) before its more recent decline set in, the Transformers franchise peaked early. Transformers 2 was the biggest hit domestically--its $400 million gross in 2009 equaling about $550 million today--after which there was erosion (Transformers 3 did all right), followed by something more like collapse (with Transformers 5 making perhaps $155 million in the same, inflation-adjusted terms, just a little over a quarter of what Transformers 2 managed). This was for a time compensated by burgeoning overseas earnings, which made Transformers 3 globally an even bigger hit than Transformers 2 had been (a billion-dollar movie in current dollars, a $1.4 billion hit in today's terms), while an even better overseas take went a long way to offsetting Transformers 4's weaker performance in its home market (so that globally it came close to $1.4 billion). But even the foreign markets did not save Transformers 5, which abroad made about half of what Transformers 3 and 4 did. Meanwhile the spin-off Bumblebee--a prequel to the series--made only Transformers 5 money domestically, and less than that internationally. (With a global take of under a half billion in current dollars, and not quite $550 million in 2022 dollars, globally it made just a quarter of what Transformers 2 did in American theaters, and about forty percent of what Transformers 3 and 4 did elsewhere.)

Transformers Film Grosses, Worldwide and Domestic (Current and 2022 U.S. Dollars, CPI-Adjusted; Adjusted Figures in Parentheses)

Transformers (2007)--Worldwide--$710 Million ($1 Billion); Domestic--$319 Million ($450 Million)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)--Worldwide--$836 Million ($1.14 Billion); Domestic--$402 Million ($549 Million)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)--Worldwide--$1.1 Billion ($1.44 Billion); Domestic--$352 Million ($458 Million)

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)--Worldwide--$1.1 Billion ($1.37 Billion); Domestic--$245 Million ($303 Million)

Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)--Worldwide--$605 Million ($722 Million); Domestic--$130 Million ($155 Million)

Bumblebee (2018)--Worldwide--$468 Million ($545 Million); Domestic--$127 Million ($148 Million)

None of this looks very promising for what people are calling "Transformers 6," or "Transformers 7" (depending on whether or not Bumblebee already has the distinction of being #6), which is yet another prequel to the 2007 film (so Transformers 6/Transformers 7 is also Bumblebee 2?)--making it seem less promising still. After all, not only does the franchise seem to be in a state of advanced decline, but the studio has followed up a less than spectacularly successful take on the material with more of the same--with a continuation along the lines of period prequel (such that where the 2007 Transformers exploited nostalgia for the '80s cartoon and toys, they now seem to be exploiting nostalgia for the nostalgia), while raising the stakes. Bumblebee was apparently intended as a "smaller" film, with a more modest (circa $100 million) budget and a Christmastime release, which seems to have boosted a film less than highly anticipated by allowing it to at least have "legs" that carried it from a mere $34 million five-day weekend release gross to a $127 million total domestically (in spite of which it was not to be seen in Deadline's list of the year's more profitable films). By contrast Rise of the Beasts is reportedly a $200 million production put out in the thick of summer--and so that much bigger a gamble.

According to Boxoffice Pro's report yesterday that gamble is not looking like a very good one--the publication's tracking suggesting a $30-$40 million opening weekend on the way to a front-loaded gross of two to at best three times that, likely failing to break the $100 million barrier, with the range they foresee $60-$90 million.

In other words, "Bumblebee 2" can be expected to do much less well than "Bumblebee 1"--which was already, by a significant margin, the weakest performer in the franchise to date.

I see little room for argument with the estimate--in part because it is pretty close to impossible for a big franchise movie to go any lower than that, but also in part because I do not know any grounds for thinking it will go higher (not least, given the long decay of the franchise's grosses I have just discussed).

Of course, as already acknowledged the films have already been increasingly reliant on overseas earnings, such that one might anticipate their finding some succor here. But even were the film to have, relatively speaking, as good an international performance as any of the Transformers films to date--like #5, quadrupling its domestic earnings internationally--the result would only be a worldwide take of $300 million-$450 million (even at the high end, no more than the first three films made in North America alone). At the low end . . . well, a movie can make $300 million domestically and still be considered a disappointment.

Given the combination of earnings now thought plausible with the massive outlay the movie could easily make Ant-Man 3 look like a brilliant success by comparison, while being far less explicable as a decision. Ant-Man 3, after all, was planned at an earlier date when Marvel was the undisputed champion of the box office (way back in the fall of 2019, apparently, just after Avengers: Endgame was being touted as the highest-grossing movie in history), and the decision to use it as the launch pad for Phase Five, if not without risk, easily seemed bold rather than foolhardy. (After all, the franchise had previously done well out of building up series' through their involvement in a Universe-wide narrative, and giving Ant-Man that spot in the Phase may have seemed a way of perking up interest in one of their weaker performers.) By contrast the decision to take this tack with Rise of the Beasts--not just making another Transformers movie, but persisting in a strategy that failed to rehabilitate the franchise's fortunes, and indeed backing the product with more money and throwing it out there in a more brutally competitive period (and, if the reports are to be believed, actually planning still more Transformers movies on this basis!)--seems exactly that.

Of course, Transformers 6/Transformers 7/Bumblebee 2 has yet to actually hit theaters, and the final film may well surprise us with its performance, somehow defying the fact that its release (June 9) will be sandwiched between those of the highly anticipated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (June 2) and that other movie with prospects looking far brighter than they did just a short time ago, The Flash (June 16), to, on the strength of audience enthusiasm and excellent word of mouth, dominate theaters through the month, and even have impressive fourth and fifth weekends in the wake of Indiana Jones' arrival (June 30) as it goes on to be the Top Gun of 2023--another exercise in '80s nostalgia that defies the doubters to dominate the summer season through sheer staying power at the multiplex. (That'll learn the naysayers!)

But should things work out in the way that seems all too predictable now it would be a reminder that if the management of Disney catches most of the critics' flak these days its executives have no monopoly on what might politely be called "poor choices." It would be another reminder, too, of at least one aspect of their poor choices, the studio's desperate cleaving to run-down franchises long past the point at which they have delivered a healthy return for apparent lack of ability or willingness to do anything else.

Could Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Be the Highest-Grossing Marvel Superhero Film of 2023?

Last month Fandango reported that the summer's most anticipated film was Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Now Boxoffice Pro predicts an opening weekend for the film in the $85 million-$105 million range, on the way to a final domestic gross in the range of $226-$325 million.

Consider for a moment what these numbers, and especially the high end of the range, could mean in light of how other Marvel-based films are doing this year--in the domestic market, at least. Ant-Man 3 topped out well below the $226 million mark (with, at last report, under $214 million taken).

Guardians of the Galaxy 3, despite the efforts of the entertainment press to put the best possible face on things, seems to be underperforming severely (certainly to go by its opening weekend), with the film's having "legs" like those of Ant-Man 3, or for that matter the other recent Marvel-based releases, suggesting that the movie's making it to $300 million from this point would be a solid performance for the remainder of the film's run, with much less conceivable. (Following up an Ant-Man 3-level opening with an Ant-Man 3-like collapse would give it as little as $230 million at the end of its run.)

Moreover, with Guardians likely the best shot Marvel Studios had at a really big hit this year (the Marvel-Sony collaboration Kraven the Hunter is a Venom-type film, doing well should it match Ant-Man 3; and while the original Captain Marvel was a billion dollar hit Captain Marvel 2 faces strong enough headwinds that it seems unlikely to buck the trend) neither of the other live-action films seems likely to better its performance.

The result is that, should Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse simply hit the upper end of the range predicted by Boxoffice Pro, it could easily be the highest-grossing Marvel release in the domestic market in 2023.

Of course, the global take could be a different story. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, merely matched its domestic earnings abroad, rather than exceeding them the way Marvel movies so often do. Still, should the Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel do no better than I have predicted ($700 million tops globally, and perhaps significantly less, with under $600 million as yet not ruled out), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse would not be far behind them, with its topping them a distinct possibility. It is even more plausible that, in spite of the budget for the animated sequel being considerably larger than that for the original film, it could be more profitable than the live-action Marvel-based releases (as a $150 million film against the $200 million+ reportedly laid out for Ant-Man 3 and Guardians).

This outcome would reflect the extent to which Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was well-received and the extent to which fans have been excited about the prospect of a sequel. Still, especially in light of the limits to its drawing power (we are, again, talking about a hit in the $300 million range, scarcely enough to place in the top ten box office hits of the year back in 2019, even before we get to inflation), if this actually happened it would also be reflective of the decay of the box office performance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) so evident since Avengers: Endgame.

In the event that all this does actually come to pass it could have some interesting implications--which I expect to go into in upcoming posts, especially as we get a clearer image of the situation.

In the meantime, Boxoffice Pro predicts a $50 million second weekend for the Guardians of the Galaxy threequel--about what the film would have if it manages a second weekend hold like that of Guardians of the Galaxy 2. For my part I predicted something in the $34-$40 million range, on the premise that the film would perform more like the last three MCU movies. The gap between $40 and $50 million may not look very big in itself, especially next to the shortfall between what this film will have banked at the end of even a robust second weekend (a little under $200 million) and what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 grossed by the same point ($248 million in 2017, which is $307 million in April 2023 dollars). However, it should be a good indicator of just how severe the depressive trend is for Guardians, and the MCU--and so how the Marvel movies will stack up relative to each other and the rest of the competition at the end of this year.

Is Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Proving to be Another Ant-Man 3? (An Estimate of Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Second Weekend Gross)

As I previously mentioned, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 opened in the same three-day May period as Guardians of the Galaxy 2 did six years earlier (May 5-May 7).

It took in a lot less, however--$114 million versus the $147 million its predecessor did in 2017 (and the $180 million that sum would be worth in March 2023 dollars).

There is no denying the significance of the drop as compared with that prior film's earnings, and earlier expectations. (Just weeks ago people were still talking about a $155 million opening, one-third higher than what the movie actually got.) Still, one may wonder if, accepting that audiences did not come out as hoped during the first weekend, they might be enticed to come out during the second--by good word of mouth, perhaps.

That is a long shot with a franchise threequel on the opening weekend of the summer season, of course--the more so given the pattern of the recent MCU movies, which have tended toward weaker legs, not stronger, even as their openings disappoint the cheer-leaders. This seems less likely still to happen for Guardians specifically when one considers how the gross fell from Friday to Saturday to Sunday night--in a manner almost identical to that of that particularly weak recent MCU performer, Ant-Man 3. (Ant-Man 3, which took in just a slightly smaller $106 million in its opening weekend, saw that weekend's gross structured in almost exactly the same way.)

Ultimately Ant-Man 3's gross tumbled 70 percent from its first (three-day) weekend to its second. Black Panther 2 and Thor 4 suffered drops almost as bad--of 67 and 68 percent respectively (with Thor 4's showing the more significant because, unlike the other two, it did not come out on an extended, holiday weekend that contributed to the further front-loading of the gross).

Even the least-worst of these numbers would still have Guardians of the Galaxy 2 pulling in a mere $38 million in its second weekend, while an Ant-Man 3-like tumble would have it taking in just $34 million--scarcely ahead of Ant-Man 3's $32 million (and half Guardians of the Galaxy 2's nominal second weekend gross of $65 million).* This would put it on track to make Ant-Man 3-like money, again, something in the $230 million range--which would be a bit under half of what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 took in in 2023 dollars (about $470 million).

In that case Guardians 3's take would fall below even the more pessimistic expectations of just a short while ago (a gross in the $290 million range) by a long way.

What would a more positive performance look like? For example, if Guardians 3 did at least as well as Guardians 2?

Guardians 2 saw a more modest 56 percent drop in weekend gross from the first weekend to the second. A far better hold than that of any of the MCU movies discussed here, the same would leave Guardians 3 with a second weekend take of $50 million at the North American box office, and maybe something in the area of $190 million total, suggesting that trajectory's leading toward the neighborhood of $300 million.

So right now that looks to me like the plausible range regarding the second weekend gross--$34 million to $50 million, with my suspicion, given the performance of the last three MCU movies, and the close parallel with Ant-Man 3, that the low end of the range is more likely than the high (with anything above $40 million a surprise).

In light of this it also seems to me that the plausible range for the domestic gross over the film's longer run is $230 million to $300 million (if, from its weaker starting point, it at least holds up as well as Guardians 2). Alongside this is an international gross in the $340 million to $400 million range, depending on whether it turns out the movie likewise made half its money overseas on the opening weekend, or has a run more broadly like that of the original Guardians. Together this adds up to the movie's prospects ranging from under $600 million in the Ant-Man 3-like collapse-after-the-first-weekend scenario, to $700 million in the event of the stronger performance.

Even with the better hold the gross would, in comparison with what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made, recall Ant-Man 3's earnings relative to Ant-Man 2 (if arrived at a bit differently, with proportionately less grossed at home, and more abroad), while without it the drop would be still more severe. (Ant-Man 3's earnings of $475 million, in real terms, are about 36 percent below what Ant-Man 2 made previously, while anything under $650 million would be less than that for Guardians--the $570 million discussed here as the extreme low end more like 45 percent less.)

As all this indicates the high end of the range is still a disappointment given what was invested in and expected of the film (and needed from it by its backer), the low, coming on top of Ant-Man 3, likely grounds for outright panic at Disney-Marvel.

* Guardians of the Galaxy 2's $65 million opening weekend in May 2017 is the equivalent of $81 million in March 2023 dollars--which would be more like two-and-a-half times what Guardians 3 would make if it went the Ant-Man 3 route.

NOTE: This post was written before the upward revision in the reported weekend gross of the film to $118 million. As the adjustment would have only a slight effect on the calculations discussed here (e.g. changing the $34-$38 million range discussed here to $35-$39 million) the author has elected to let the prediction stand.

Fast X's Box Office Gross: A Prediction

As I remarked a while ago, my estimates about what Marvel movies will make are predicated on there being plenty of data at this point from which to make them--much more than is the case for other films, even when they are part of a franchise. (Speculating about Indiana Jones 5, for example, there was much less to go on--especially because not only was there only one other Indiana Jones film in the past thirty-three years, but because there is so little else like it out there in the market.)

It seems to me that the Fast and Furious franchise merits some comment here--the series, after all, in its tenth movie in twenty-three years, thus providing a basis for such guesses.

Of course, making sense of that data has its challenges. In line with the wild changes in the series' premise and casting (we went from a story about Southland truck hijackers who like to drag race to "the Rock-punches-a-torpedo spy-fi"), the series' grosses have been volatile, with the third movie representing a low for the series' fortunes, but recovery subsequently setting in, with the next four films going from strength to strength--hitting a peak with the extraordinary response to Fast 7. (Grossing $1.5 billion in the summer of 2015, this is equal to over $1.9 billion--almost $2 billion--in March 2023 dollars.) Still, if the series remains one of the biggest moneymakers around--and even more impressive if one cuts out the superhero films—its films' grosses have seen erosion since, with the eighth film not doing as well, and the ninth less well than that (in part because of the pandemic, by the lowered standards of which its earnings were very impressive indeed).

Simple induction suggests that the declining trend is likely to carry over to the tenth in some fashion. But how exactly?

Adjusted for those 2023 dollars Fast 7 (again) made $1.9 billion, the eighth movie (The Fate of the Furious) about $1.5 billion--a rough 20 percent drop. The ninth film took in about $800 million in 2023 terms--a bigger, almost 50 percent, drop, from what "F8" made, but again there was the pandemic. One might estimate on the basis of the prior shift from film to film that in its absence one would have seen another 20 percent drop, in which case it would have ended up with $1.2 billion in today's terms (not unreasonable given the proportion by which so many movies seemed to be off from their normal grosses during that patch). Anticipating another 20 percent drop from that level one could picture Fast X making a bit under $1 billion.

How does this compare with the increasingly detailed picture we have now with the film's release just ten days away? Boxoffice Pro recently told us that the movie is on track for a $65-$70 million North American opening--about what F9 made during the pandemic in current dollar terms ($70 million).* As is not uncommon for blockbusters of this type, the three prior Fast films took in about 40 percent of the money from their domestic run during the first three days, which suggests a gross from the whole theatrical run in the $160-$175 million range.

In considering this one should remember that the films have relied heavily on their overseas earnings, with the last three films making between 76 and a truly extraordinary 82 percent of their gross there. Extrapolating from the domestic gross this implies a plausible range of between $515 and $780 million abroad for between $675 and $960 million globally (the high end of the range, notably, equivalent to the result of the 20 percent-of-the-gross-per-film-erosion being carried forward to #10); with the $800 million in between more or less a match for how the ninth film did.

So what does this leave us in the end? A North American gross in the $150-$200 million range to be on the safe side, and a relevant global range of $650 million to $950 million or so to be equally safe at that level, with my best guess at a more precise figure inclining toward the middle of this range--$170 million domestic and $750-$850 million worldwide.

The result is that we again have a case of numbers that look very strong indeed by the "normal" standard--but are nonetheless not to be judged by that standard, given the distance they represent from the series' peak (a mere 40 percent, perhaps, of what Fast 7 took in, and less even than one might have hoped from what F9 took in); and the extraordinary outlay to make this movie (a staggering $340 million), which may call its plain and simple profitability into question, the movie failing to break even after counting in the post-theatrical earnings from home entertainment, etc..

The possibility, like the prospects of Indiana Jones 5, reminds us that we may be looking not just at "Marvel fatigue," or even "superhero fatigue," but fatigue with the blockbuster as we know it, perhaps in era-ending degree. Still, Hollywood remains a long way from facing that, and anyway never gives up on any franchise no matter how exhausted and riddled with losses it is (as the ever more pointless reiterations of the Terminator demonstrate). Already it seems we have word of a Fast 11 in the works, while I half expect that we will someday be seeing James Mangold enlisted to make a movie about Old Man Dom confronting what he knows in his very old bones will be his last race, prior to the inevitable reboot.

* This works out to $78 million in March 2023 dollars, meaning that Fast X's opening weekend gross is estimated to be a good deal less than what the prior movie made when the pandemic's impact on moviegoing was so much larger.

Video Game Movies Become Blockbusters

A month ago I suggested that the opprobrium that once attached to major Hollywood features adapted from video games was fading away. None can be expected to take a non-technical Oscar home soon, but the kind of sneering we used to see is just not part of the scene anymore.

Still, such movies, if sometimes money-makers ever since Hollywood started cranking them out (otherwise there would not have been so many of them), were never really first-rank hits--not even an Angelina Jolie-vintage Lara Croft or Prince of Persia movie--while if the Resident Evil franchise ran for six films the movies were made on a smaller scale, while I might add, relying very heavily indeed on its popularity in the United States. (In 2017 Resident Evil: The Final Chapter made just $27 million in North America--but $36 million in Japan and $160 million in China, those two countries accounting for two-thirds of its global gross in a significant departure from the norm for English-language productions.)

This has changed with The Super Mario Bros. Movie and its $1 billion gross--which all but guarantees that Hollywood will be looking at more such projects, and ready to plow more money into them, the more in as the increasingly aged and weary collection of franchises that have been the mainstay of its release schedules are failing badly with moviegoers, and there seems less and less room for doubt about "superhero fatigue."

This raises the question of what the studios will make of those other adaptations--the more in as Hollywood executives so consistently fail to understand what "works" when a movie hits. When James Bond exploded in the '60s they thought "spies." When Star Wars exploded in the '70s, they thought "space." They were very, very slow to get that rather than "spies" or "space" what mattered was the invention of the action film as we know it, and the "high concept" film more broadly, precisely because grasping this meant understanding craft, aesthetics and the mind of the audience, rather than the kind of uncomprehending simian imitation to which they inclined.

So is it likely to go with those adaptations. It seems to me that The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been the success that it has because instead of vaguely turning the stuff of a video game into a movie they made a movie faithful to what a vast audience loved in the games--and had no pretensions to being anything but the makers of a crowd-pleasing film (which, incidentally, probably could not have worked nearly so well had they attempted to make it as a live-action film).

If Hollywood gets this aspect of the film's success I will be very surprised indeed--and instead expect to see lots and lots of adaptations made by people who just didn't "get it," which flop and leave the studio executives stupidly baffled about why moviegoers refused their offerings.

About That Other Chris Pratt Movie . . . (On The Roaring Success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie)

For the past month The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been the box office champion, in the U.S. and globally, bringing it over $500 million domestically, and more than matching that sum abroad.

This weekend, its fifth in release, saw it add almost $19 million more to its haul domestically, testifying to decent holds from weekend to weekend through April after its colossal opening ($146 million in its first Friday-to-Sunday period, and $225 million over the whole holiday weekend).

Making it the year's first (and possibly, only) $1 billion Hollywood hit, all but certain to make the year's Deadline Most Valuable Blockbuster competition, and additional feather in Illumination animation studio's increasingly full cap (these are the folks who brought you Sing, The Secret Life of Pets and the Despicable Me franchise), it is a genuine overperformance in multiple ways, which could not be more different from how the live-action Super Mario Bros. film released this time of year thirty years ago flopped so hard it was all but instantly buried, and scarcely remembered even a few years later save by Mario Bros.-loving kids who watched the movie because the characters were in it. The feat is the more impressive given that the critics were anything but on its side (an extreme contrast with the breathless cheer-leading for, say, Top Gun 2 that, again, was an underappreciated factor in its success).

Why has it all worked so well? I think David Sims hits on something important when he points to the movie giving audiences "what they actually want" from a movie such as this one--plain and simple, unpretentious, entertainment. Considering this--and the fact that this movie was directed by Teen Titans Go! veterans Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic--I find myself remembering that Teen Titans Go! episode Horvath and Jelenic cowrote, "The Return of Slade," and the lesson that it had to teach. As Raven tried to explain to Cyborg and Beast Boy, taking something that's "for kids" and trying to make it over into something adults would find "cool" is apt to produce something grotesque, and pleasing to no one. I think the makers of this movie took that lesson to heart, in which case--my compliments, and congratulations on the success of your film.