Disney and Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens the flood gates on what is a consisted flow of event movies from this Friday until early September.
Early tracking four weeks ago indicated $120M in U.S./Canada over 4-days for the Presidents Day holiday. Disney is hoping for at least $95M over 3-days, $105M-$110M over four at 4,300 theaters — nonetheless a franchise record start and a great 25% surge from the 3-day opning of 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s $75.8M. As is standard, there are no other frosh wide releases from rival studios. With the Peyton Reed-directed threequel starting its offshore start on Wednesday, overseas is around $160M for a global start of $280M (that includes $35M-$55M from China). Tracking remains slightly unpredictable for big films even as the pandemic has eased, however, with Jonathan Majors new mega-MCU villain Kang the Conqueror making his big screen debut after his variant’s introduction in the Marvel/Disney+ series Loki, that could truly create a stampede of walk-up business this coming weekend. Currently, domestic advance ticket sales for Ant-Man 3 is tracking 15% behind Thor: Love and Thunder which opened to $144.1M over 3-days. Natch, Disney has all the Imax (400 auditoriums), PLF (~900), Dbox (280) and 3D screens (2,500).
Ant-Man 3 will start Wednesday in France, Korea, Germany and Italy before putting up its antennae in essentially all overseas markets through Friday. Turkey is being delayed amid the humanitarian crisis. Stateside, Thursday previews start at 3PM.
Currently Rotten Tomatoes reviews are at 63% fresh off 70 reviews at the time of this post which is under the 87% certified fresh of Ant-Man and the Wasp and 83% certified fresh of Ant-Man. Previous CinemaScores were A for Ant-Man and A- for Ant-Man and the Wasp. Previous Ant-Mans skewed mostly male at around 60% with 62% of the audience over 25.
Ant-Man 3 is the first MCU title to release in China in step with domestic since Disney/Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame and Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019 (the latter having gone a week early). It’s also only the second Marvel title to be given a China date since Far From Home — Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was granted a window earlier this month, basically as a primer. This all comes after what was seen as an unofficial ban on movies with Marvel characters over the past few years, an issue that seemed to stem from cultural, geopolitical and wider Hollywood sensitivities.
As ever, and perhaps more than ever, China will be a swing market this weekend. As expected, folks did not turn up in droves for Black Panther 2, although it had already been subject to piracy, so was not a good barometer for which way the wind is currently blowing among audiences as regards Marvel movies. But, to complicate matters, there is a host of new local titles set to release this week, including Journal of the Party Secretary and sports drama Ping-Pong of China.
In like-for-likes, Ant-Man and The Wasp bowed to $169M overseas while the original Ant-Man did $109M.
Another thing to keep an eye out for is how the heavier sci-fi focus in Quantumania resonates in markets that have struggled with that kind of genre in the past.
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