Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had the best opening weekend for the Paul Rudd-led MCU movie series. However, it looks like the film has already fizzled out in its second week at the theaters.

Ticket sales for Quantumania took a sizable tumble in its second week. The movie is down 69% from its first-week haul of $105 million in domestic box office sales. This is the worst second-week box office performance for an MCU movie as the threequel only managed $32.2 million in its sophomore week in US theaters.

The second-week performance of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania dethrones Black Widow as the worst-performing MCU movie in its second week at the North American box office. Black Widow, starring Scarlet Johansson, had a drop of 67.8% on its sophomore weekend. But, unlike Johansson's MCU swan song, Ant-Man 3 doesn't have an industry-changing pandemic as an excuse.

As a result, eeperts and analysts are weighing in on the poor performance of Ant-Man 3. Movie industry sources say that Quantumania’s performance is somewhere in between a blip and a turning point for Marvel which has dominated the film industry for a good number of years now.

"As second weekend drops go, anything in the 70% realm is pretty significant," senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian said. "But movies that open with over $100 million are generally front-loaded. In some cases, ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall’ comes into play."

This just means that bigger movies tend to have bigger drop-offs as audiences flock to the theaters on the first week. Case in point, the MCU’s top-performing movies in 2021 and 2022 also had similar drops in their second-week earnings. Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness performed 67.5% and 67% lower on their second weekend respectively.

Additionally, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is projected to end its run at the global office somewhere in the range of $470 million to $540 million. This means that it is tracking to make less than Ant-Man and the Wasp’s $622 million.

The third film in the Ant-Man series just recently crossed $300 million. In comparison, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever grossed $331 million on its opening weekend alone.

However, industry sources say that Marvel is not too worried about Ant-Man 3’s box office performance or its mediocre review scores. Jonathan Majors' highly-rated performance as Kang may have made up for the movie's shortcomings.

"Marvel takes something away from movie including Black Panther, including Avengers," an insider close to the film said. "I can say we’re incredibly proud of the film, Jonathan Majors does a fantastic job as Kang. It’s the movie we wanted to make. Box office is what it is. But it’s not going to stop people from going back to the theaters."

While Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is still at the top of the US box-office charts, Cocaine Bear is nipping at its heels. The Elizabeth Banks-directed movie about a bear that accidentally ingested a bag of the illegal substance earned $23 million in its opening weekend.

Hopefully, the movie will make up ground enough to warrant the production of a fourth movie.