“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” to Blast Energy into the Start of the Summer Box Office

	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$156 million
	The Fate of the Furious	$8.7 million
	How to Be a Latin Lover	$7 million
	The Boss Baby	$5.5 million
	Beauty and the Beast	$4.6 million

The week has finally arrived: it’s the start of the summer movie season and with it comes a much-needed burst of energy into the otherwise lifeless box office as of late. The highly anticipated sequel to 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, what many claim was Marvel’s riskiest film to date, opens tomorrow and there is no doubt it will crush its competitors at the box office. The big questions surrounding this film are just how high it will go… and for how long.

It’s shaping up to open north of $150 million, but it won’t be breaking any records. It won’t beat the biggest opening of the year so far, which belongs to Beauty and the Beast at $174.7 million and is also still the biggest weekend of 2017 to date. In terms of its place in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Guardians 2 should open as the fifth-highest film in the universe, beating Iron Man 2 but coming short of Iron Man 3. So come Monday there likely won’t be any headlines proclaiming the shattering numbers that this new movie reached over the weekend, but when you take its story in full context, there’s a much bigger accomplishment to be found.

Walt Disney Pictures

The first Guardians of the Galaxy movie is said to have been a risk because it took a lesser-known Marvel team and gave them the blockbuster treatment without knowing whether or not audiences would respond to them. Granted, fans had already dedicated six years to this universe and Marvel Studios, so it wasn’t quite as big of a feat as it may have seemed at the time, but for not being a film starring Robert Downey, Jr. or Captain America, it made $94 million in its opening weekend, now ranked as the eighth-highest opening of a Marvel film, and that is certainly a feat. Taking that into account, and the fact that Guardians is now considered one of the best Marvel films and has a much larger fanbase, an opening for the sequel that’s about $60 million more than its predecessor is the story of success that really matters here.

Plus, its big competition for the rest of the month includes King Arthur, Alien: Covenant, and Pirates 5, which should all make decent money, but might not be big enough to stop Guardians 2 from bulldozoing over them. So the legs of Guardians 2 and how much it can make total domestically and where it will place in the MCU by the end will be the real thing to watch. Globally, the film has already made over $150 million.

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	N/A	N/A	3,881,884	217,543
The Fate of the Furious	$98.7m	$197.6m	54,722	90,767
How to Be a Latin Lover	$12.2m	$14.8m	10,483	N/A
The Boss Baby	$50.1m	$150.1m	28,233	32,307
Beauty and the Beast	$174.7m	$482.1m	N/A	64,838

The rest of the box office will consist of holdovers, the first two being The Fate of the Furious, which has been doing well at the box office for several weeks now, and How to Be a Latin Lover, which surprised last weekend with its strong opening. Fate is eyeing another drop around 50 percent in its fourth week to bring in between $8-10 million and catapult its domestic total over $200 million. Worldwide, the film is now at $1.1 billion and the eighteenth highest film in the world and it should climb several more spots by the end of the weekend. Furious 7 made a total of $1.5 billion two years ago and Fate is eyeing a path to overtake it, but it’s going to be a steep hill to get there.

Latin Lover is almost on the complete flip side of Fate of the Furious, with a domestic total not even at $15 million yet. However, for a small film that’s only open in a little over 1,100 theaters and appealing to a much narrower audience, it’s doing very well. In its first weekend, it made $12.2 million after having been expected to make under $10 million in its debut. Predictions have it dropping a little less than 50 percent, taking its total over $20 million.

	Rotten Tomatoes		IMDb	Metacritic
	Critics	Users	Stars
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	85	N/A	8.1	66
The Fate of the Furious	67	78	7.3	56
How to Be a Latin Lover	53	80	6.0	54
The Boss Baby	53	59	6.5	50
Beauty and the Beast	71	85	7.7	65

While Beauty and the Beast didn’t make it into the top five last weekend, thanks to The Circle‘s weak performance in its premiere and the fact that Baahubali 2, which opened very well last weekend, will drop around 60 percent, Beauty should be able to reclaim its rightful spot in the top five for the final time. While the film is slowly coming to its end, it’s still close to $500 million domestically and at $1.14 billion worldwide as the thirteenth highest film of all time. WIth Beauty and the Beast‘s place Disney now has 7 films in the top 15 and is hoping for at least a few more depending on how Guardians 2 and The Last Jedi do this year. It also has Thor: Ragnarok and Cars 3 opening this year, which could make a strong impression as well.

Also in the top five, coming in just above Beauty and the Beast, is, once again, The Boss Baby, looking to increase its domestic total of $150 million and worldwide total of $406 million.

(Sources: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com, rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, metacritic.com. Tweets and Likes represent figures for this week only. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed. Tracking Board does not report Rotten Tomatoes user ratings for movies that have not yet seen wide release.)

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor