TMNT is apparently going to be a hit and Guardians is falling more than 60%. I don't get it.
Three things.
TMNT is an established brand with well known characters, not to mention how aggressively Paramount/Nickelodeon marketed the film, especially on their networks. They went as far as pulling new episodes of the cartoon series
just to give more publicity to the film (which frankly makes no sense, but they've been airing the heck out of the cartoon on Nicktoons). There was even a "behind the scenes" type special. Haven't seen one of those since Disney did that in the 90's.
YET, the prediction is a modest 60-65 mil. GOTG had an unprecidented 94 million opening in the weakest of weak movie months. They would have been happy with the same 60 million and called it a success anyway. There's a sequel already confirmed, a cartoon series, and Rocket Raccoon comics have been doing well for Marvel in the past few months. GOTG had it's successful weekend, and it stinks that it's dropping but... here's the third thing...
Four movies came out directly after GOTG, turtles being one of them. That's some fierce competition as far as blockbusters go. TMNT would have topped anyway (again, brand). Then there's that lame disaster movie, that fever dream dance movie, and some British and Indian love story art thing that no one was going to watch anyway (unless it gets an Oscar Nom). Had their been a week inbetween GOTG and TMNT, I'm sure GOTG would have done some more business, but not much. This
is after all August, when the best you can get is a sleeper hit of a low budget movie.