Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has sadly been hit with a blow at the domestic box office after receiving an estimated $32 million, which is roughly a 69% drop.
The news comes via the Hollywood Reporter, and would mean that the Ant-Man and the Wasp sequel has suffered the worst second-weekend decline for any mainstream comic book movie that opened to more than $100 million domestically. While this is an unprecedented number for a second-weekend drop, there are a few reasons why the movie may not have done as well as some other MCU movies.
For starters, Ant-Man 3 was hit with a Rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which likely hurt the film’s longevity at the domestic box office. Along with this, less than stellar word of mouth may have damaged the movie’s future weekends in theaters. Universal’s Cocaine Bear also opened this weekend and is projected to have overperformed, which may have resulted in some lost money for Ant-Man.
It is also worth noting that the Ant-Man movies have never been the best-performing films in the MCU, so perhaps the second-weekend drop can be attributed to the overall interest in this particular franchise. The movie’s successful first weekend was mainly due to the official introduction to the MCU’s next Thanos-level threat Kang the Conqueror, meaning that future weekends would be more likely to underperform once word of who this new villain was spread via the internet.
At the end of the day, though, while there are plenty of reasons for the underperformance of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, it does show that there are problems that Marvel Studios needs to address; namely, the fatigue audiences are experiencing with their films and the lack of excitement for its next phase. Hopefully these issues will be addressed by their upcoming films Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Marvels.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is currently showing exclusively in theatres. For more on the film, we’ve got a slew of related articles down below.
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