Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 bests Super Mario in weekend box office battle of the Pratts
Hollywood’s secret weapon against superhero fatigue is Chris Pratt
Aux News Pratts
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Chris Pratt has defeated Chris Pratt at the box office, with Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 dethroning Super Mario Bros. from the top spot, making Pratt Hollywood’s spring cleaner. Pratt’s latest release brought in a projected $114 million domestically and $282 million worldwide, jumping on and squishing the billion-dollar grossing Super Mario after four weeks at number one.
That’s not to say Mario has been sleeping on the job. The animated adaptation of arguably the most iconic and influential video game ever has done something only 19 movies have done before: Grossed more than $500 million at the domestic box office. Many people—including this writer—said it couldn’t be done because why is Chris Pratt voicing Mario? But Nintendo, Illumination, and “Mr. Box Office 2023” Chris Pratt are taking the Rainbow Road to the bank, so “wahoo” for them. With another $18 million in ticket sales, Super Mario Bros. has accrued $518 million domestically and $1.15 billion, nudging Toy Story 4 out of the number five spot of all-time highest-grossing animated films.
While Pratt was shutting naysayers up with his popular Mario movie, he also obliterated the notion of “superhero fatigue.” The well-reviewed Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 shows viewers aren’t tired of superhero movies, but understandably, they’re tired of bad superhero movies. The film did, however, fail to bring in more than 2017’s Vol. 2. Still, the 2017 release benefited from a different, pre-pandemic time when people would go to the movies with slightly more regularity than they do now—not to mention, there were probably fewer shuttered cinemas in 2017. So the sequel comparison is a little less effective barometer of success. Plus, $114 million is a lot of money for a movie about a talking raccoon and his friend, a talking tree.
The rest of the top 10 looks strangely and surprisingly like a healthy, diverse box office. There’s a horror movie (Evil Dead Rise), a coming-of-age dramedy (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret), one of those romantic comedies that never get made anymore (Love Again), and an action movie (John Wick: Chapter 4). Elsewhere is a fantasy film (Dungeons & Dragons), a movie about wiley deal-making executives (AIR), a war movie (Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant), and, we can’t believe we’re typing this, a buzzy Finnish actioneer (Sisu). All of the movies in the top 10 cracked $1 million, slightly proving that people will see movies without $200 million price tags, too.
Here is the whole top 10 in list form (via The Numbers):
- Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie
- Evil Dead Rise
- Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.
- Love Again
- John Wick: Chapter 4
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
- Air
- Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
- Sisu
37 Comments
Movies are back, bay-bee!
Spider-Man No Way Home made almost 2 billion dollars in the middle of the pandemic. I don’t think this will dramatically change peoples’ minds.
hope guardians has nice long legs i really liked it a lot.
Some of the Guardians definitely have nice long legs!
I’m still hoping that the word of mouth keeps Dungeons & Dragons afloat for a while with a long tail so it ends up solidly in profit. It was very good and I want more.
I’m glad James Gunn was able to cap off the strongest trilogy within the
MCU.I’m less concerned that it looks to mereley be a box office hit
rather than a mega-blockbuster.https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2023/05/07/gotg-vol-3-flies-off-into-the-beautiful-forever-sky/
Is it just me, or are pop culture writers the only group more obsessed with Chris Pratt than Hollywood executives?why is Chris Pratt voicing Mario?Because he’s a celebrity with a track record of successful voice work that’s very close to the type of voice work Nintendo and Illumination wanted for Mario. I don’t think he was necessarily the best choice for the role, but he could be counted on for a safely capable performance and to bring a bit of celebrity cachet to the film, which are the only two things the bigwigs cared about. It’s not rocket science.Also, I suspect Mario has yet to crack the top 5 animated films, because I suspect whatever list people are using is the Disney-approved list leaving out (sigh) The Lion King (2019).
I mean, they know. It’s just meant to keep fanning those last burning embers of angry commenters and clicks going on and on about it.
Yeah, when I heard Pratt was cast and how much brouhaha there was about it, I assumed it was live action (and never really bothered to check it) when it came out, and I saw the trailer, my first thought was “everyone’s freaking out over a voice over!?”
There are apparently a lot of angry nerds who couldn’t love a Super Mario Bros. movie unless Mario was voiced by the original guy from Mario 64 talking like “It’sa me, Mario!” in an offensive fake Italian accent for all 85 minutes.Except all that anger didn’t add up to much, because the movie with Chris Pratt talking like a normal person made over a billion dollars.
Mario’s original VA was in the film as a different character.
No freaking surprise. I mean, I always knew that Mario film would be tagged with A-List Celebrities rather than professional voice actor and even Chris Pratt was involved with these amazing The LEGO Movies back then.Then again, I wasn’t as annoyed with him being selected as several people did given his successes in similar roles. I honestly thought he was OKAY GOOD ENOUGH in the film with almost everyone else acing their roles. That’s good enough for Illumination and Nintendo and apparently good enough for every one else, given the $1 Billion worldwide earning.
Eh.. I’ll give you one ‘amazing’ Lego movie. The second one got a bit messy story-wise. Both are kinda weak in terms of endings.
I think a real issue with casting Pratt is that he really didn’t fit the role. He’s not someone you’d associate with Mario. I honestly would’ve expected people like Zac Efron, Taron Egarton, or even Chris Pine before Chris Pratt.
But yeah, Pratt was probably the weakest voice role in the Mario film. I think it’s because he’s just a weird combination of bland and goofy at the same time. Even when he’s doing a serious live action role, he always comes off as someone who is seconds away from telling a joke. His voice work is just… ‘okay’, since he doesn’t really stand out vocally.
Jack Black, Anya Taylor Joy, and even Seth Rogan nailed their roles though. Though with Rogan, his voice really, really fits Donkey Kong for some reason. Almost everyone else was interchangeable though. Charlie Day wasn’t even on screen enough for me to have a real opinion but he usually has the manic behavior that’d fit a Luigi after Luigi’s Manson.
“Because he’s a celebrity with a track record of successful voice work that’s very close to the type of voice work Nintendo and Illumination wanted for Mario.”
OK. As in what? WHAT voice work did he do that screams Mario? Was it him playing “Chris Pratt’s voice” in The Lego Movie? Yeah, that’s the one that sold me. I saw The Lego Movie and the first thing I thought when I heard his voice was “It’sa Mario”.
I feel bad for D&D. They should have either popped it out a few weeks earlier or waited for late Summer. A week before Mario was a bad idea.
Yeah, the D&D release date was weird and the competition was easily avoidable. I feel the same way about Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.; not aiming for a Mother’s Day weekend release seems very dumb.
D&D had zero chance of being profitable with a $150m budget IMO. The movie is likely $100m from breaking even and $200m from making a large enough profit to warrant an immediate sequel. Changing the weekend likely wouldn’t give them that considering they did win their opening weekend and came just a few million under the top-end of their projections.They needed to make a $70-80m movie or less.
Isn’t 114M what Spider Man did back in 2002 on its opening weekend?
I love that this box office number is just burned into my brain. I remember when that was seen as such a big number.
I mean I still wouldn’t say no to someone depositing that into my bank account …
Antman 3 did 106M. But GoG3 has a much better word of mouth and international appeal so they should reach 700M+. Still disappointing.
GoG3 should be expected to do about the same box office as the other movies. It’s not like they’ve done anything to earn a larger audience with their very specific type of semi-humor and overwrought drama. (I say this as someone who very much enjoyed GoG3 and very much considered the first two movies to be mid.)
Looks like we’re at peak Pratt. All downhill from here.
And so we enter… Pratt-fall.
Take your damn star and get out XD
Who knows, maybe the Jonathan Majors experience will repeat itself.
I don’t know who Chris Pratt’s agent is, but attaching him as the least interesting actor in a decent list of massively successful pre-packaged IP despite his solo films brutally tanking and dragging down entire studio finance departments is a coup.Sure, he’s in Super Mario Bros. But he’s in Super Mario Bros. with Jack Black. And Jack Black is the most profitable box office draw in an EVEN MORE successful franchise with Jumanji (his starring movies blowing away The Rock’s own box office over and over again).Sure, he’s in Guardians of the Galaxy. But he’s in Guardians of the Galaxy with ZOE SALDANA of the multi-billion dollar multiple box office franchises. Hell, Karen Gillan has more billion dollar movies than Chris Pratt has at this point.Sure, he’s in Jurassic Park. But he’s in JURASSIC PARK.But any time dude makes a movie where he’s the only star that stuff tanks. Whoever Chris Pratt’s agent is needs to be getting at least a 35% cut.
Does this mean cinema is doomed or not?
Definitely.
Incredible that they still use the “pandemic” excuse for bad boxoffice numbers. They also forget that movie tickets cost 40% more than in 2019 so in term of *number of people* – much less are going to watch GoG3 than the previous ones. And even with this price increase not one MCU movie (but Spiderman but it was also a Sony movie) reached 1 billion since 2019 while 3 did in this year alone.Indeed the quality went down but people are also less interested.
“Many people—including this writer—said it couldn’t be done because why is Chris Pratt voicing Mario?”Many people are S-T-U-P-I-D.
Seems slightly disappointing given the $250m budget and given its the final GotG movie of a trilogy. Not sure the post-pandemic excuse fully works anymore given we have seen several movies do very well.
I think the movies that break the trend are unique events. Sam Raimi of the 1.5+ billion dollar Spider-Man movies (in 2023 dollars), a sequel specifically to those same movies, and now a sequel to a franchise whose audience has always been pretty static and pre-built. They know who they are, they know what they want, and these movies are aimed specifically at them with no appeal to a wider audience than that.
GotG3 isn’t even doing as well as recent MCU movies of similar scale before it did. Dr. Strange 2 made $450m worldwide in its opening weekend. Black Panther 2 made $352m worldwide in its first weekend. And Thor 4 was $302m. And all three of those movies didn’t have releases in China while GotG3 did (and made $28m there last weekend).It is doing better than Ant-Man 3 but considering how mixed to bad the reviews for that movie were, not sure that is saying much.
Is it fair to say that Chris Pratt beat himself off the throne?