The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise is one of the MCU's best and most successful franchises. With Vol. 3 on the horizon, projections for the film's box office opening have started making the rounds, and it's not looking great.
Thanks to Deadline's projections, Vol. 3 is currently tracking at a $130 million domestic start. While that's still a lot higher than the first Guardians of the Galaxy film's domestic opening ($93.3 million), the group was still relatively unknown to mainstream pop culture — something Chris Pratt remembers. Vol. 2, however, improved upon that number greatly with a $146.5 million domestic opening against a $200 million budget. Each film went on to gross $772 million and $863 million worldwide, respectively, throughout its theatrical run, but a lower projection than the sequel does not bode well for it.
Could it be a Marvel thing? Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania may have opened to a franchise-best $106 million (the second film opened to only $75 million), but it failed to have legs and is currently winding down at around $474 million worldwide. That's the lowest total in the entire Ant-Man trilogy. Thor: Love and Thunder had a similar fate — opening to a franchise-best $144 million domestically but failing to catch Ragnarok's $855 million worldwide total. Then again, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness blew away its predecessor with a whopping $187 million domestic opening and ended up with a worldwide total of $955 million (the first Doctor Strange opened to $85 million and legged out to $677 million worldwide).
It's hard to diagnose the exact issue given the popularity of superhero flicks — especially when considering that the Guardians of the Galaxy movies have been consistently more well-received than some of the other standalone franchises in the MCU. Maybe it has been too long — Vol. 2 came out in 2017 — or maybe fans are just ready for Gunn's next chapter in DC.
Vol. 3 once again brings the MCU's ragtag group back together for one last ride as they team up to face the villainous Adam Warlock (Will Poulter). The team of Peter Quill (Pratt), Drax (Dave Bautista), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Groot (Vin Diesel), and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) are once again reunited and will also be joined by a different timeline's Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) that was seen at the end of Avengers: Endgame.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will be released on May 5.
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