'Guardians Of The Galaxy' Opens To Impressive $11.2 Million At Thursday Box Office-Newest Marvel Movie Off To Great Star

Guardians of the Galaxy is doing more than just protecting the universe; they are also bringing the summer box office back to life. The new Marvel superhero movie debuted to $11.2 million from Thursday night showings alone, and is expected to do big business when the film openings in theaters nationwide today.

GOTG is also aiming to be the biggest August opening ever, should it beat the $69.2 million that The Bourne Ultimatum took in during the summer of 2007.

However, fans will also have to consider that this is expected to be the widest August release ever, being shown in 4,080 theaters.

This marks the first movie in the brand new franchise for the comic book studio, and director James Gunn says that it has a very different tone to other ensemble superhero movies like The Avengers.

"It's much more of a space opera than a superhero movie," Gunn explained to The Hollywood Reporter.

And it looks like the buzz around the movie is definitely warranted, as Marvel has already green-lighted a sequel film to be released on July 28, 2017. This is a big risk considering the film was very costly to make, at $170 million, and at the time of the announcement the studio had yet to even see whether this film would be successful at the box office.

Should it be the biggest August opening it will have to beat out Godzilla ($93.2 million), Transformers ($100 million), and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (91.6 million) to take the title of the highest grossing movie debut this year. However, Guardians' Thursday night gross is more than all of these films, $9.3 million for Godzilla, 8.8 million for Transformers, and 8.7 million for Spider-Man, so can we expect that it's final numbers will be more than all these movies? We will have to wait and see.