Marvel Kingpin Kevin Fiege's Drunken Bar-Bet of a Movie Pays Off, As Guardians of the Galaxy Hits $37.8 Million on Thursday/Friday Sales

Having read several of these articles (at Forbes, Variety, etc.), I gather it's now a guessing game as to its total weekend cume, depending on its "multiple" -- how the total weekend will compare (as a multiple) to the opening night(s) box office. Marvel properties draw a lot of fans (I love science!) who flock to early shows, thus giving them so-so "multiples," as their takes are more front-loaded than other movies.

Assuming the movie is particularly front-loaded, its total cume will be 2.4 times its opening night; if it's not quite so front-loaded, it could be 2.65x or so. It's being projected to take in somewhere between $90 to $95 million for the weekend.

Some speculate it could wind up doing better than that, as it's apparently being "positioned" as family-friendly, so it might grab some of that big Kid Movie business. (As for family-friendly: Apparently there's one off-color joke about the residuum of male self-abuse looking like a "Jackson Pollack painting." I assume they mean Star-Lord spends a lot of time in his ship jackin' it.)

Meanwhile, Marvel/Disney is trying to control expectations, and are saying that they expect $85 million, and its rivals are trying to increase expectations, saying that the film should easily make more than $95 million. (And, you know, should it not make that: It's a relative failure. Oh well.)

The film was a pretty big gamble, given that not even geeks really know who the hell the "Guardians of the Galaxy" are, and certainly no one (except Kevin Fiege) was clamoring for a Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

But sometimes the safe play is actually the risky play, I guess.

Incidentally, the rest of the box office this summer is terrible, at least in America. Box office is down something like 28% from last summer, and last summer was also horrible.

Only a clutch of movies have done much of anything -- The Apes film (which everyone seems to like), The Fault in Our Stars, the Transformers sequel (and by the way, I do not understand the appeal of this franchise at all, even though I love science), and the Captain America sequel that started the summer (um, in April).

There seems to be some hope that Guardians will "save" the summer, I guess by getting people back into the habit of going to the theaters, so they can see gems like Lucy.

But meanwhile Hollywood is making a lot of money in foreign markets, even with this summer's slate of dreck.

So I guess we can expect a lot of bad movies with bad CGI, even though we in America are trying to signal to Hollywood that we're sick of that.

Oh I just realized: Pretty much the whole tone of this movie is borrowed from Firefly. The whole "oddball assortment of criminals who fly around the Black and do semi-heroic things" thing.

Peter Quill ("StarLord") even wears a browncoat. (Well, a deep red/oxblood coat -- looks pretty brown.)

Who knows, maybe it will spark interest in another Firefly movie. I'm told one of the main actors from Firefly has a cameo (maybe just a voice cameo, though).

The soundtrack is really helping all of these trailers too.

posted by Ace at 03:01 PM

| Access Comments