It’s Marvel Studios’ world now, Hollywood is just living in it.
Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy
Marvel
Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy opened this weekend with an estimated $94 million in the U.S. — an astounding debut that is at least $20 million above most expectations. Indeed, Guardians shattered the record for the best domestic opening in August ever, leaping over The Bourne Ultimatum's $69.3 million debut in 2007. (Adjusting for inflation, however, 2001's Rush Hour 2 is still the champ for the month, opening with $97 million in 2014 dollars.)
For Hollywood, this is great news — the movie business has been starved for a blockbuster, crowd-pleasing hit this summer, especially after Transformers: Age of Extinction proved to be a far less mighty box office presence than its predecessors. (At least, in the U.S. — overseas, Transformers has never been more popular, with Age of Extinction pushing past $1 billion in global grosses this weekend.) At this point, Marvel is the only independent production company with a virtually unbroken track record of box office hits — everyone else is playing catch up.
For Marvel, however, Guardians — the company's tenth feature — represents an even bigger achievement than a mere summer blockbuster. It is the studio's most successful attempt at launching a new individual franchise since its first film, 2008's Iron Man.
As of Aug. 3, 2014. (*Estimated opening weekend gross only. **Total U.S. gross minus opening weekend.)
Adam B. Vary / BuzzFeed
This is no small thing. Studio chief Kevin Feige was fond of calling Guardians his studio's biggest risk since Iron Man, given how deeply unfamiliar most of the moviegoing public was with the obscure Marvel comics title featuring a talking raccoon and giant tree person who can only speak his name. Director James Gunn (Slither, Super) also brought his left-of-center sensibility to the project — marrying cosmic science fiction with a quirky, pop-culture savvy sense of humor — that was far from a down-the-middle-of-the-plate pitch for such a high profile summer movie. Even with a successful launch at Comic-Con last year, and its ascendant star Chris Pratt palpitating hearts in the months leading up to its release, it was very much an open question whether audiences would respond to Guardians at anywhere near the level of Marvel's established franchises.
Well, they have: Guardians came within spitting distance of the $95 million debut of April's Captain America: The Winter Soldier — and when final numbers come in on Monday, the upstart Guardians has a fighting chance of surging past Captain America 2. The studio's decision last month to greenlight a Guardians sequel, with Gunn returning to write and direct, appears to have been the right call. (It's slated for a July 2017 release.)
Looking outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the last franchise-launching movie featuring characters who'd never been in movie theaters before to open this well — The Hunger Games in 2012 — was based on a hugely popular book series with a vast built-in fan base. Again, that is very much not the case with Guardians of the Galaxy — in print, anyway.
In movie theaters, however, Guardians clearly benefitted from being a part of the increasingly lucrative Marvel Studios brand. Audiences have come to trust that a movie with Marvel's logo will equal a good time — especially after the seismic cultural and commercial impact of The Avengers.
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