America remains hooked on a feeling, collectively call in sick for this meeting of the Book Club, and Other Box Office News.
Turns out the quickest and easiest way to get everybody who wants to go on a rant about “superhero fatigue” or “more like FLOP-ians of the Galaxy!!” or whatever to shut the fuck up, is putting out a good movie that people want to see multiple times. Almost like the real fatigue all along has been with mediocre movies rather than Marvel or superheroes. These are the kinds of keen insights I get paid jack and shit to bring you whilst significantly dumber people who see $114 million openings as “flops” get mega-Internet famous and earn a living off of spouting. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Anyways, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 remains your US Box Office #1 in a week where the biggest competition was a sequel to Book Club. But despite the snark inherent in that prior sentence, this is actually a resounding success for James Gunn’s jamboree as the $60.5 mil sophomore weekend equates to a 49% drop which marks the best second-week hold for any Marvel movie since Black Panther, and the best of any Marvel sequel to date. Meanwhile, Guardians got a release in China after all and is doing very well over there, winning two weekends straight with a drop of just 32% from its debut. That helps take its worldwide total to well over $500 mil which should firmly shut the door on any and all “Marvel fatigue” talk for however long it takes The Marvels to come out. Or, worse case scenario, until Fast X eats everybody’s lunch in a few days’ time because I can’t have nice things on the Box Office and DISCOURSE beats.
READ MORE: Daft Punk – Random Access Memories – Throwback 10
Until then, we have Book Club: The Next Chapter, a sequel to that 2018 comedy about old women reading Fifty Shades of Grey because it was a simpler time where you could make an entire movie out of such a premise and take home over $100 million. But a lot’s happened in the last half-decade and the promise of horny old ladies having PG-13 reactions to soft-erotica, but this time overseas cos why not milk a nice holiday out of a sequel whilst at it, just doesn’t carry the same allure as it once did.
The original Book Club opened to $13.5 million; The Next (and now likely final) Chapter failed to score even half of that, just $6.5 million. And on Mother’s Day weekend, no less! Sticking with highly-public failures, Robert Rodriguez and Ben Affleck’s newest crime thriller that you are literally just now hearing about for the first time cos its studio did zero marketing, Hypnotic, crashed and burned to the tune of $2.3 million, the worst opening of both men’s careers. Ah, well. I’m sure that one’ll be no big loss, though, considering it only cost *checks notes* $65 MILLION?! HOW?! I thought Rodriguez’s whole thing was being able to make a proper movie on a budget equivalent to the cost of a lads mag and lucky-dip pick & mix?!
Biggie, Biggie, Biggie, can’t you see? Sometimes your Full List just hypnotizes me.
US Box Office Results: Friday 5th May 2023 – Sunday 7th May 2023
1] Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3
$60,500,000 / $213,201,178
At time of writing the BOR last week, I wasn’t sure if we here at Set the Tape were going to have a Guardians review for you since Dave Bond, who claimed review duties, contracted COVID around the time of its release. Fortunately, he recovered very quickly and we’re all really happy that he’s doing well. It also means I am having to resist the urge with every fibre of my being the urge to make a poor-taste “well, one of the COVID symptoms…” joke with regards to his mixed views on the movie since it’s no joking matter. COVID is still out there, people! Keep masking up, disinfecting, and taking care!
2] The Super Mario Bros. Movie
$13,000,000 / $535,959,015
I too would be interested in a Legend of Zelda adaptation, Eiji Aonuma. Just, for the love of God, keep Illumination ten million miles away from it. Or, actually, go full shit-post with it and cast Chris Pratt as Link in a recreation of those infamous Phillips CD-I Zelda games. It’s guaranteed a billion dollars regardless, why not?
3] Book Club: The Next Chapter
$6,500,000 / NEW
My efforts to pitch Hollywood and Sky Arts a film/TV series that’s just Amy Walker and Chris Haigh running their own Set The Tape book club remain at an impasse. In the meantime, Chris was a big fan of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love.
$3,728,000 / $60,188,357
Just gonna come out and say it: I think Meg 2 looks like glorious fucking nonsense and I’m already booking fourteen opening-day tickets to it.
5] Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
$2,500,000 / $16,476,954
Despite what I stated last week, I did not manage to make it to the early screening of Margaret. Ended up spending too much of that day hanging out around Manchester with a good friend of mine and so I didn’t reach the cinema in time. On the other hand, we went to a lovely veggie Indian restaurant and one of the servers mistook me for a girl, a high I have been riding ever since.
6] Hypnotic
$2,355,000 / NEW
Last week, I finally finished the excellent first season of high-intensity chef dramedy The Bear on Disney+ and, within days, the Season 2 date gets dropped on me. Love when that inadvertently happens.
$1,930,000 / $182,964,089
In action anniversary news, Lee Thacker marked 40 years of the surprisingly political and critical police-helicopter thriller Blue Thunder, a movie whose themes of surveillance and police overreach are even more potent today.
8] Love Again
$1,550,000 / $5,006,881
One of the weekend’s better drops at 35%, but obviously it don’t mean shit when said drop is from an opening of $2.3 million. At least Priyanka Chopra Jonas has a dogshit Russo Brothers series for Amazon to fall back on!
9] AIR
$768,000 / $51,602,291
Well, it was nice having a few weeks with no six-figure films in the Top 10.
10] Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
$741,000 / $92,170,866
If you like yourself some genre-mashing period horror by the man whose main career goal appears to be making Silent Hill movies a thing, then you’ll be thrilled to hear that Studiocanal have just now put out a 4K restoration of Christophe Gans’ Brotherhood of the Wolf. Charlie Brigden checked it out and they loved everything about it!
Dropped out: Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, Sisu