Yahoo Autos ‘Ant-Man 3’ Crashed at the Box Office After a Trilogy-Best Opening. What Went Wrong?
The bigger they are, the harder they fall?
That’s the presiding feeling about the box office performance of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” Disney’s superhero threequel opened to $106 million domestically in February, eviscerating trilogy records among the “Ant-Man” standalone stories. But ticket sales for Paul Rudd’s latest adventure have cratered in subsequent weeks. At this rate, “Ant-Man 3” may become one of the rare Marvel movies to either fall short of (or barely surpass) the $500 million mark at the global box office.
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At this point, it’s earned just $470 million globally after six weeks of release. That’s not much higher than Disney’s pandemic-era Marvel movies, including “Black Widow” ($379 million globally while also debuting day-and-date on Disney+), “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” ($432 million) and “Eternals” ($402 million), and nowhere near franchise heavyweights like “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ($955 million) and “Thor: Love and Thunder” ($760 million). And sure, Ant-Man may not be on Marvel’s A-list, like the God of Thunder or Sorcerer Supreme, but even worse, it’s unlikely to match the totals of the first two “Ant-Man” movies — which earned $519 million and $622 million, respectively.
With a production budget of $200 million and a marketing spend of at least $100 million, “Ant-Man 3” is expected to fall short of the roughly $600 million needed to break even in its theatrical run. Recent Marvel movies, including “Black Widow” and “Eternals,” were granted amnesty for losing money on the big screen because they were either released simultaneously on Disney+ or were put in theaters at a time when people were more reluctant to go to the movies due to COVID concerns. The dismally reviewed “Quantumania” can’t use the same excuses for losing tens of millions in its theatrical run. The one bright spot is that it could recoup some costs through home entertainment and other ancillary markets.
Disney declined to comment.
“There’s no question, audiences were not satisfied with ‘Ant-Man 3,'” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “Superhero fans are highly in tune with these stories, and that helps when the films connect, which has been almost all of the time. But in this case, it hurt.”
Box office numbers back up that assessment. Marvel may remain critic-proof in terms of opening weekends, but its movies are no longer immune to quickly falling back down to Earth. Word-of-mouth generally dictates a film’s “multiple,” which is industry parlance for the ratio of its total gross from its debut. Most films aim for a three or four multiple. In the case of “Ant-Man 3,” it will barely have a two multiple at the domestic box office, a sign that interest completely evaporated after landing on the big screen. By comparison the first film had a multiple of 3.2 and the sequel had a multiple of 2.9.
“Quantumania” is running out of steam in North America with $209 million, which is higher than the original “Ant-Man” ($180 million) but behind the sequel “Ant-Man and the Wasp” ($216 million). Though it’ll likely catch up to its predecessor at the domestic box office, the third movie should be bringing in much more coinage. After all, it debuted 40% ahead of the second installment.
“For Marvel, there is always such a high bar that anything less than a grand slam box office home run is seen as underwhelming,” says Paul Dergarabedian, a senior Comscore analyst. “With ‘Ant-Man 3,’ the highest grossing movie released this year thus far, it may be that the fans are looking for a bit more of the magic that was a part of the Marvel brand for so many years and through so many great films.”
