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Movie Monday: Guardians of the Galaxy Guards Box Office Crown

Perhaps Groot should change his signature catchphrase to “I am money.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is making plenty of it, after all, and few had doubts that it’d repeat as box-office champion this weekend. And indeed, since the slate of new cinematic entries went absolutely Knowhere, Guardians proved to be a pretty safe bet.

Buoyed by strong reviews, the third Guardians flick banked another $60.5 million in North America this weekend, boosting its total haul to $213.2 million. That’s still a bit lower than its predecessor (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, of course) earned at this point in its run. But it’s still enough to appease Marvel’s overlords at Disney and buy Drax the Destroyer a really comfy couch.

In just two weekends, Vol. 3 is now the year’s fourth highest-grossing film. And given that it’s less than $1 million behind Marvel stablemate Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on the list, it could well be third by the time you finish reading this paragraph.

Add in its overseas haul, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 now boasts a worldwide gross of $528.8 million.

But for all its muscle, Vol. 3 will still have a hard time chasing down a couple of animated plumbers as the year’s highest-grossing film.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie finished second to Vol. 3 this week, but it’s still collecting piles of coin. It earned another $13 million worth of them this week to finish second—pushing its grand domestic total to $536 million. That’s far and away the year’s high score. Worldwide, it’s picked up a positively peachy $1.2 billion. And while the year’s still quite young, Super Mario Bros. have a plumber’s chance at becoming the first bona fide kids’ movie to top the year-end charts since 2016’s Finding Dory.

Book Club: The Next Chapter, the only new entrant in the top five, wasn’t much of a box-office page turner. The sequel earned an estimated $6.5 million—less than half of what the original Book Club debuted with. Skimming ahead, I’m not seeing a Book Club 3: The Wrath of Font in the franchise’s future. Not unless Rocket Raccoon is interested in joining, anyway.

Evil Dead Rise continues to scare up cash. It earned $3.7 million to finish fourth this week. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret closed out the top five with an underwhelming $2.5 million. It barely beat out another newcomer, Hypnotic, which settled for a $2.4 million and sixth place.

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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.