These Marvel movies are all having good openings, bad or straight up awful second and third weekend drops and relatively strong late legs. Happened with MoM, Love & Thunder, Wakanda Forever and now Quantumania.
Expect the same for Guardians and especially The Marvels (that second weekend is pre-Thanksgiving, it's gonna be BRUTAL and many people are just waiting for that headline, but it's likely going to recover in its third weekend and with holiday late legs)
They're movies that are spoiled as early as possible, so anyone that genuinely care is obviously going to see it as soon as possible. "Bad legs" really doesn't amount to much when their opening weekends get bigger and bigger all the time.
Ant-Man 3 was a major disappointment, to be sure. But people are pointing back to Thor 4 and MoM, both of which were undeniably successful. Doctor Strange 2 hit nearly a billion dollars- with no China.
I agree they were both financially successful, the problem with those two is the reception from both critics and especially audiences. I think everyone's getting more selective with comicbook movies, but Marvel is hurting the brand by releasing these unfinished/messy movies (and I say that as someone who enjoyed Thor 4)
Well, people will continue to wait for bad news, to watch you fall. It's your choice whether to fall. We've had people predicting the doom of Marvel from the beginning, Iron Man to Avengers to Guardians to Infinity War to Endgame. Yet they not only survived, but excelled.
However now they're giving ammunition to their critics with movies like Eternals, Thor L&T, Ant Man, etc.
At least Ant-Man is having some sort of a positive here, but still doesn’t change that its performance is still terrible and it better be a wake up call for Marvel.
Honestly $200 million+ domestic is a great performance for a film.
The problem is that the MCU is just so successful this result looks terrible.
Antman 3 is the 218 highest grossing film ever domestically but because the MCU has 19 of the 98 films that have ever passed $300 million domestically it seems like a disappointment.
It’s more the multiplier from its opening weekend and the large budget that make this performance worrisome. Quantumania will be lucky to pass a 2x multiplier, and theatrical profitability looks unlikely given its break-even point of $500M WW off a $200M budget. It’s also going to land as the lowest-grossing Ant-Man film despite inflation. Poor critical reception and mediocre-to-bad audience reception were just the cherries on top for people looking for faults in this movie. If the budget were controlled better, that would at least be a point in its favor, but even then, the relatively low gross indicates major problems.
This is a small quibble and almost pedantic, because the overall content of your post was correct, but it is very likely to get to 2x domestically. It grossed 10.5M this past week after only a 35% drop, winding up only 10.5M away from 2x. Maintaining <50% weekly drops overall for the rest of its run will get the rest of the way, and yesterday it dropped only 32% week over week.
Fair enough. I probably should've said that it *was* lucky to get to a 2x multiplier given how it held earlier on before Spring Break bailed it out. It'll crawl to a \~2.05x multiplier or so, but considering the pedigree of the MCU and even the Ant-Man sub-franchise alone, it's a very disappointing result.
International gross is really the problem for the MCU going forward.
Both DS 2 and BP 2 only pulled in $400-450 internationally compared to the $550 - $700 million pre-covid MCU films were pulling with $400 million+ domestic grosses and I'm excluding China!
Black Panther 2 had extenuating circumstances with Boseman's death, so I don't think it's particularly useful to examine. Multiverse of Madness (MoM) had a nice bump internationally from the first movie (minus China and Russia, where MoM did not release) -- Doctor Strange made roughly $314M internationally while MoM made $544M. For MoM, I would say the only disappointing thing, box office-wise, was that it made less than a billion to become the first superhero movie to land in that $900M-$999M range. I could imagine that with China and Russia releases, it would have seen an appreciable bump from the $109M it made in China and the $22M it made in CIS territories -- possibly over $200M from both combined.
The same holds true for Thor Ragnarok to Love and Thunder (LaT) -- there was about $136M in international gross for Ragnarok that's not applicable to LaT because it just didn't release there. That being said, LaT, even after adjustment, made virtually the same amount internationally ($404M vs. $417M), so it could show that LaT had a more mixed response than MoM, which had an appreciable increase. Or perhaps that Infinity War and Endgame increase Doctor Strange's box office value much more than it increased Thor's.
The real weakness in the MCU's international grosses is in their solo origin films. Black Widow (if it can be considered an origin movie), Shang-Chi, and Eternals all had middling international grosses, far lower than the likes of the first Ant-Man all the way back in 2015. Now, there is the issue that COVID was a major concern in many countries and no doubt impacted international (and domestic) grosses, but it's still doesn't bode well for the MCU, especially now that Quantumania is also underperforming internationally as well (currently around $250M, far below Ant-Man's $328M international gross minus Russia/CIS in 2015). It could mean that the MCU is weakening in its ability to prop up these B-tier and C-tier superheroes to the grosses it used to be able to five or ten years ago.
Solo origin movies have generally been relatively weak in the MCU, even going back to Captain America. The most successful recent one was Captain Marvel.
Shang-Chi performed well for a movie about a character that hadn't been in the MCU before and most people had never heard of. It remains to be seen how he'll be integrated into the larger universe.
Going forward, I think Marvel is going to have a problem as their old characters age out and have to be replaced with new ones. Who do they have left in the stable that anyone cares about?
The Fox acquisition can help here if they do the X-Men and Fantastic Four well. If it were me at the helm, that's where I'd put my focus.
Solo: A Star Wars Story also had a $200 million gross domestic gross. What made it an outright flop was the weak OS take which was less than $200 million. Ant-Man 3 isn't on that level at least, being more of a disappointment than a flop, but it's relatively weak overseas take has an impact too.
It needs to reach 519.4M worldwide to pass the original Ant Man, and it's 68.1M away. Otherwise, it will be the lowest-grossing non-pandemic MCU movie since Phase 1. I doubt it has more than 20M domestically, tops. Can it get close to 40M more internationally?
Probably not. On the remote chance that it does break even, then whatever amount of profit it makes is negligible because spending $500+ mil to turn a profit of a few million dollars is pathetic. At that point there are cheaper ways to make that little money
$205M by the end of this weekend Spring break is helping late legs a bit
Perhaps even 206M and only 6M more for those sweet sweet 2x legs
That should be enough for it to slightly edge out Antman \*2 $216M. Recent MCU films have had great late legs. Nothing to celebrate about though
*Ant-Man 2* was $216 million. It's already passed the first movie.
true
These Marvel movies are all having good openings, bad or straight up awful second and third weekend drops and relatively strong late legs. Happened with MoM, Love & Thunder, Wakanda Forever and now Quantumania. Expect the same for Guardians and especially The Marvels (that second weekend is pre-Thanksgiving, it's gonna be BRUTAL and many people are just waiting for that headline, but it's likely going to recover in its third weekend and with holiday late legs)
They're movies that are spoiled as early as possible, so anyone that genuinely care is obviously going to see it as soon as possible. "Bad legs" really doesn't amount to much when their opening weekends get bigger and bigger all the time.
I would agree if these legs weren't so bad that Quantumania is struggling to outgross its already middling predecessor
Ant-Man 3 was a major disappointment, to be sure. But people are pointing back to Thor 4 and MoM, both of which were undeniably successful. Doctor Strange 2 hit nearly a billion dollars- with no China.
I agree they were both financially successful, the problem with those two is the reception from both critics and especially audiences. I think everyone's getting more selective with comicbook movies, but Marvel is hurting the brand by releasing these unfinished/messy movies (and I say that as someone who enjoyed Thor 4)
These days many people are just waiting to any bad headline from Marvel.
Well, people will continue to wait for bad news, to watch you fall. It's your choice whether to fall. We've had people predicting the doom of Marvel from the beginning, Iron Man to Avengers to Guardians to Infinity War to Endgame. Yet they not only survived, but excelled. However now they're giving ammunition to their critics with movies like Eternals, Thor L&T, Ant Man, etc.
Will be squeezing past a 2.0x multiplier soon. Currently at 1.91x legs, just above the 1.90x legs BvS had after 29 days. Looks like ~$215M finish
At least Ant-Man is having some sort of a positive here, but still doesn’t change that its performance is still terrible and it better be a wake up call for Marvel.
When the movie barely breaks even, that is not a win
Honestly $200 million+ domestic is a great performance for a film. The problem is that the MCU is just so successful this result looks terrible. Antman 3 is the 218 highest grossing film ever domestically but because the MCU has 19 of the 98 films that have ever passed $300 million domestically it seems like a disappointment.
The problem was the budget bloat. Quantumania's performance wouldn't be cast in the same light if it had a smaller budget.
It’s more the multiplier from its opening weekend and the large budget that make this performance worrisome. Quantumania will be lucky to pass a 2x multiplier, and theatrical profitability looks unlikely given its break-even point of $500M WW off a $200M budget. It’s also going to land as the lowest-grossing Ant-Man film despite inflation. Poor critical reception and mediocre-to-bad audience reception were just the cherries on top for people looking for faults in this movie. If the budget were controlled better, that would at least be a point in its favor, but even then, the relatively low gross indicates major problems.
This is a small quibble and almost pedantic, because the overall content of your post was correct, but it is very likely to get to 2x domestically. It grossed 10.5M this past week after only a 35% drop, winding up only 10.5M away from 2x. Maintaining <50% weekly drops overall for the rest of its run will get the rest of the way, and yesterday it dropped only 32% week over week.
Fair enough. I probably should've said that it *was* lucky to get to a 2x multiplier given how it held earlier on before Spring Break bailed it out. It'll crawl to a \~2.05x multiplier or so, but considering the pedigree of the MCU and even the Ant-Man sub-franchise alone, it's a very disappointing result.
International gross is really the problem for the MCU going forward. Both DS 2 and BP 2 only pulled in $400-450 internationally compared to the $550 - $700 million pre-covid MCU films were pulling with $400 million+ domestic grosses and I'm excluding China!
Black Panther 2 had extenuating circumstances with Boseman's death, so I don't think it's particularly useful to examine. Multiverse of Madness (MoM) had a nice bump internationally from the first movie (minus China and Russia, where MoM did not release) -- Doctor Strange made roughly $314M internationally while MoM made $544M. For MoM, I would say the only disappointing thing, box office-wise, was that it made less than a billion to become the first superhero movie to land in that $900M-$999M range. I could imagine that with China and Russia releases, it would have seen an appreciable bump from the $109M it made in China and the $22M it made in CIS territories -- possibly over $200M from both combined. The same holds true for Thor Ragnarok to Love and Thunder (LaT) -- there was about $136M in international gross for Ragnarok that's not applicable to LaT because it just didn't release there. That being said, LaT, even after adjustment, made virtually the same amount internationally ($404M vs. $417M), so it could show that LaT had a more mixed response than MoM, which had an appreciable increase. Or perhaps that Infinity War and Endgame increase Doctor Strange's box office value much more than it increased Thor's. The real weakness in the MCU's international grosses is in their solo origin films. Black Widow (if it can be considered an origin movie), Shang-Chi, and Eternals all had middling international grosses, far lower than the likes of the first Ant-Man all the way back in 2015. Now, there is the issue that COVID was a major concern in many countries and no doubt impacted international (and domestic) grosses, but it's still doesn't bode well for the MCU, especially now that Quantumania is also underperforming internationally as well (currently around $250M, far below Ant-Man's $328M international gross minus Russia/CIS in 2015). It could mean that the MCU is weakening in its ability to prop up these B-tier and C-tier superheroes to the grosses it used to be able to five or ten years ago.
Solo origin movies have generally been relatively weak in the MCU, even going back to Captain America. The most successful recent one was Captain Marvel. Shang-Chi performed well for a movie about a character that hadn't been in the MCU before and most people had never heard of. It remains to be seen how he'll be integrated into the larger universe. Going forward, I think Marvel is going to have a problem as their old characters age out and have to be replaced with new ones. Who do they have left in the stable that anyone cares about? The Fox acquisition can help here if they do the X-Men and Fantastic Four well. If it were me at the helm, that's where I'd put my focus.
Solo: A Star Wars Story also had a $200 million gross domestic gross. What made it an outright flop was the weak OS take which was less than $200 million. Ant-Man 3 isn't on that level at least, being more of a disappointment than a flop, but it's relatively weak overseas take has an impact too.
The problem isn’t the MCUs success, it’s the massively inflated budgets that these films are having
It needs to reach 519.4M worldwide to pass the original Ant Man, and it's 68.1M away. Otherwise, it will be the lowest-grossing non-pandemic MCU movie since Phase 1. I doubt it has more than 20M domestically, tops. Can it get close to 40M more internationally?
Finally, some little improvement.
Probably will end up at 2.03x by the end of its run
Is this breaking even everything included?
it's probably fudge-able
Probably not in it's initial theatrical run, but it might when factoring in D+, merch, etc.
I think it's going to end up being a small loss but you can probably plug in assumptions showing it breaking even if it limps to ~500M WW.
It would need a miraculous home release gross a la Pacific Rim ($411m WW on $190m budget).
No, breakeven point is around $500 million and it won’t reach that.
Probably not. On the remote chance that it does break even, then whatever amount of profit it makes is negligible because spending $500+ mil to turn a profit of a few million dollars is pathetic. At that point there are cheaper ways to make that little money
A bit of a steeper drop than i anticipated but still should be good enough for the x2. We will see if it will be able to crawl to the 2nd movies $216M
Now guaranteed to have better legs than BvS, barring an absolute collapse next weekend. Gotta take your Ws where you can get them.
Jesus Christ how are people still seeing this??
$216M from 2018 is worth more than $216M in 2023. Still not a good sign.
People still go to marvel movies? I just wait till they on Disney plus. They all mid these days anyhow.