Box Office Recap: Weekend of May 12th, 2023

Starting with this weekend, we will start breaking down the previous weekend's box office returns.  This week saw the arrival of Book Club: The Next Chapter, and the majority of other screenings offered were related to previous releases. The top five from last weekend were as follows:

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: $60.5 Million
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: $13 Million
• Book Club: The Next Chapter: $6.5 Million
• Evil Dead Rise: $3.7 Million
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret: $2.5 Million

So to start out, Guardians drops off a little under 50% week to week, which is better than the first and the second movies, which had a 55% drop-off week to week. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has already nearly eclipsed the total box office run of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, due on Disney+ this Wednesday. That said, Guardians may not reach the heights of the prior two entries in the trilogy because the theatrical window is shortened by a barrage of major franchises over the coming weeks starting this week with Fast X.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie continues its fantastic run, bringing its cumulative total to just around $1.2 billion. It is currently nested at #5 all-time for animated movies at the box office, though it is possible over the coming weeks that it could rank higher. In the family film market, The Super Mario Bros. Movie will be running unopposed until the first week of June when Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens. By that point, the movie will probably reach #3, eclipsing The Incredibles 2 and Frozen, though it is unlikely to pull another hundred million to beat out Frozen 2.

Probably an example of how the box office has not quite recovered from the pandemic, Book Club: A New Chapter opened at #3 with about half the total box office return of the predecessor in its opening weekend. The budget was only marginally higher ($20 million instead of $14 million) but considering the marketing push it is unlikely that this film makes back its budget. It will likely end up on Paramount+ within the next few months.

Evil Dead Rise continues to perform well, pulling a cumulative $121 million to date on a budget of $17 million. It appears that Warner Brothers did the right thing by moving this release from streaming to theatrical considering these returns and could bode well for Blue Beetle come August which is in a similar situation.

Unfortunately, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. is having a hard time finding an audience, despite being one of the strongest releases of the year. This could end up being a film that finds its audience on streaming but it did substantially underperform with a little over $16 million at the box office on a $30 million budget.