Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the third installment to the franchise and it blew past the numbers its predecessors managed on opening weekend. Not only did the project manage to gross over $100 million over the traditional three-day weekend, but it also became one of the biggest opening weekend performances for the month of February.
Lukewarm receptions be damned, Ant-Man 3 is getting the job done. The first weekend numbers might be a bit below expectations, but that’s in the grand scale of things. The project failed to meet expectations in Chinese cinemas, racking up just $19.2 million over the weekend.
But it worked better than expected at the domestic box office, dwarfing the $57 million the first Ant-Man movie earned and nearly doubling the $76 million the 2018 predecessor pulled in.
The superhero adventure starring Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly has also made some history, joining fellow superhero blockbusters Black Panther and Deadpool as the third best performing box office weekend in February. The former pulled in $242 and $152 million across four days respectively, so seeing a Marvel franchise that isn't among the elite join this exclusive company is still a good sign.
The $225 million earned on the international stage is slightly under projections, but that’s mostly due to Russia not being in the equation and China flopping. The Ant-Man movies have always had smaller budgets and less popular storylines, but this one carried the weight of being the Phase 5 opener for the MCU. It’s possible that these lofty expectations played a part in the flurry of bad reviews painting the project as bad as Eternals.
But that didn't stop the audience from making Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania the first $100 million domestic debut of 2023. In fact, it was so popular that people in charge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are already discussing Ant-Man 4. This was one of many Marvel projects done in collaboration with Disney, but we will be seeing less and less of those on their coveted streaming service.
President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, recently came out with some promising news regarding the production of the Blade reboot, but that doesn't cancel out the delay of the Marvels.
