Stiff competition on the way.
Early box office predictions of $65 million fell short as Marvel’s Ant Man, released on July 17, 2015, earned a decent, yet disappointing for Marvel’s standards, $58 million its opening weekend.
The action-comedy was the second lowest opening for a Marvel film, after The Incredible Hulk’s $55 million opening in 2008 (Which then went onto make $134 million domestically).
In fact, considering the box office openings of films in the past few weeks, such as Jurassic World, Inside Out and Minions, Ant Man is well below all of them. Marvel should take note from this as it also says something about movie audiences; that they won’t just line up to see Marvel movies with any old superhero behind it, they want household names, like Iron Man or Thor.
This could spell trouble for Marvel in the future, when they decide to expand the MCU universe. However, the ant-sized flick isn’t gone just yet. Most audiences enjoyed the film and gave it an A CinemaScore rating, which should help it benefit from word of mouth.
The film looks like it will be in some murky water in the next few weeks however, with heavy competition from the likes of Pixels, Paper Towns, and Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation. Even if the film never makes it huge, it only cost $130 million to make, so it is not expected for it to play out like The Avengers or Iron Man 3.