Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has broken a record that puts it on track to underperform even below Scott Lang’s second MCU adventure, as the blockbuster saw a 69.83% drop-off in box office earnings that could set off alarms over at Marvel Studios.
Despite Marvel movies setting a long-standing precedent for very front-loaded theatrical runs, Ant-Man 3’s numbers put it a tad below the two previous MCU films that saw a steeper decline after its premiere weekend: Black Widow and last year’s Thor: Love and Thunder, which both saw a 68% decrease ticket sales. Heading into the weekend, few expected Ant-Man 3 to maintain its momentum, especially given the movie’s mixed reception, although the final downturn was not even as bad as the 72% some forecasts anticipated.
Summing up Ant-Man 3’s weekend, The Wrap notes that the 69.83% amounted to the film earning $32m in American theaters, down from $106.1m last week, overall making it the worst drop for any superhero movie to clear past the $100m mark since Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. All that brings Ant-Man 3’s worldwide box office total to $363.6m, as the drop seen among domestic moviegoers was not as bad in other countries, where the combined 57% decline falls more in line with industry standards, resulting in an income split of $167.3m from domestic and $196.3m from international movie ticket sales, though without much help from Chinese theaters.
One likely culprit for Ant-Man 3’s struggle was Cocaine Bear’s debut, as the odd comedy horror flick opened to $23m, hardly as much to bring down Marvel from the top spot, but enough to put a dent in Disney’s finances. Perhaps most worryingly for Phase Five’s first movie, Ant-Man 3 is currently expected to fall behind 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp’s $622.7m, a film that had a much lower budget than Quantumania’s $200m production expenses.
All these numbers also fail to take into consideration two things: that movie ticket prices have gone up, even if slightly since 2018, thus fewer people are watching Marvel movies as a whole; and, that Disney Plus’ existence means MCU streaming rights are no longer sold to other companies for extra profit. These two facts are possibly behind Marvel reconsidering its approach to releases in the future, with The Marvels being delayed towards the end of the year, shortly after Disney CEO Bob Iger warned of incoming changes to the MCU.
It’s even hard to compare Black Widow to Ant-Man 3 due to the former releasing in Disney Plus simultaneously, so Marvel Studios will surely want to reverse this negative trend as soon as possible.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is currently available in theaters.
Source: The Wrap