Always a collective to buck the trend, Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has enjoyed a hugely impressive sophomore frame at the worldwide box-office, earning the best second-weekend hold of any sequel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at North American cinemas, and taking its global cume to $528.8 million.
Guardians 3 has already passed the lifetime gross of February’s Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which was hit with a 70% second-weekend decline and middling reviews, all on its way to a $475.8 million total.
James Gunn’s MCU swansong had a phenomenal 49% drop on its way to grossing $60.5 million at the U.S. box-office, taking its total to $213.2 million after 10 days of release.
Overseas it grossed $91.9 million, for an international tally of $315.6 million, including an impressive $58.4 million from China, where Hollywood fare, and MCU movies in particular, have struggled to make any kind of post-pandemic impact when granted a release.
Elsewhere The Super Mario Bros. Movie continued to power-up, earning double-digits during its sixth week of release, and in the process passing Minions to becoming Illumination Studios biggest-grossing film yet. Its $13 million weekend took the domestic gross to a whopping $536 million, and $1.21 billion globally.
Elsewhere Evil Dead Rise still managed to scare $3.7 million from punters pockets, despite being available on VOD. The horror-sequel has amassed $131 million worldwide, which isn’t bad for a film that was made for HBO Max.
It wasn’t such good news for Robert Rodriguez and Ben Affleck though, with Hypnotic (read our ★★ review here) suffering the worst wide opening of their respective careers with a terrible $2.4 million.
“In Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 our beloved band of misfits are settling into life on Knowhere. But it isn’t long before their lives are upended by the echoes of Rocket’s turbulent past. Peter Quill, still reeling from the loss of Gamora, must rally his team around him on a dangerous mission to save Rocket’s life – a mission that, if not completed successfully, could quite possibly lead to the end of the Guardians as we know them.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 brings the galactic gang back together one last time and sees the return of Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Dave Bautista (Drax the Destroyer), Bradley Cooper (Rocket Raccoon), Vin Diesel (Groot), Karen Gillan (Nebula), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), Sean Gunn (Kraglin), Sylvester Stallone (Stakar Ogord), Elizabeth Debecki (Ayesha), Michael Rosenbaum (Martinex), Will Poulter (Adam Warlock), Chukwudi Iwuji (The High Evolutionary), Maria Bakalova (Cosmo the Spacedog), Linda Cardellini (Lylla), Asim Chaudhry (Teefs the Walrus), Mikaela Hoover (Floor the Rabbit) and Daniela Melchior (The Suicide Squad) and Nico Santos (Crazy Rich Asians).
