Marvel’s 31st film, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, is falling short of projections at the global box office by approximately $30 million. With around $104 million domestically and another $121 million from overseas markets, the superhero threequel is eyeing a $225 million global opening weekend. This is in line with Friday estimates, but lower than the $255 million that the movie was expected to gross going into its first weekend.
Ant-Man 3 is performing softer than expected in Asia, despite a rare day-and-date debut in China. The increasingly insular Middle Kingdom has virtually stopped accepting imports in the post-pandemic landscape, which is in stark contrast to just a few years ago, when Hollywood studios appeared to have prioritized China as a potentially lucrative territory. Ant-Man 3 has made $19.2 million so far in China, its biggest international market.
The Middle Kingdom is followed by the U.K. ($10.9 million), Mexico ($8.7 million), Korea ($7.2 million), Australia ($5.3 million), Indonesia ($5.1 million), Germany ($4.5 million), France ($4.5 million), Brazil ($3.9 million) and India ($3.9 million). Ant-Man 3 is pacing 13% ahead of the first Ant-Man film, and 27% behind Ant-Man and the Wasp. Minus China, Ant-Man 3 is 52% ahead of Ant-Man, and 5% ahead of Ant-Man 2.
Starring Paul Rudd as the lovable thief-turned-Avenger, all three Ant-Man films have been directed by Peyton Reed. These movies have typically performed lower than the more prominent MCU tent-poles — the first Ant-Man ended its global run with $519 million in 2015, while Ant-Man 2 finished with $622 million worldwide in 2018. By comparison, each of Marvel’s 2022 releases — Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($952 million worldwide), Thor: Love and Thunder ($760 million worldwide) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($855 million worldwide) — performed better. And two of these movies ended with lower lifetime hauls than their immediate predecessors.
Ant-Man 3 was deliberately designed to be a more spectacular experience, with most of the action taking place in the visually dazzling Quantum Realm. Reed had said prior to the film’s release that he demanded a bigger canvas to play with this time around, and wasn’t interested in making yet another palate cleanser between big MCU releases. However, Ant-Man 3 has received significantly poorer reviews than pretty much every other Marvel film. Collider’s own Ross Bonaime wrote in his review, “Quantumania is a promising, but shaky start for Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's just a shame it comes at the sake of the little guy.”
Ant-Man 3 is the first film in Phase Five of the MCU, which will build towards Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. The film also stars Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror, Evangeline Lilly as Wasp, Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet van Dyne, Michael Douglas as Hank Pym and Katherine Newton as Cassie Lang. You can watch our interview with Reed below, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.