Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is currently tracking to open lower than Thor: Love and Thunder at the domestic box office.
New box office estimates have Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on track to come in just short of Thor: Love and Thunder‘s opening weekend.
According to Deadline, the forthcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe installment is expected to gross between $105 and $120 million in 4,300 theaters over the four-day Presidents’ Day holiday. That number is a bit lower than the $131M early tracking suggested back in January but is still higher than the opening debuts for 2015’s Ant-Man ($57.2M) and 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp ($75.8M). A global start of $280 million is expected for Quantumania, including upwards of $55 million from China. Domestic advance ticket sales for the Ant-Man threequel are tracking 15% behind Thor: Love and Thunder, which opened to $144.1 million over three days in July 2022.
Phase 5 of the MCU is looking like it will be kicked off with a whimper instead of a bang, with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania having received mostly negative reviews from critics, with Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror so far being listed as one of the film’s few highlights. At the time of writing, Quantumania holds an approval rating of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 149 reviews, making it the second MCU film to receive a “Rotten” rating on the review aggregate website after 2021’s Eternals (47%).
Quantumania Begins Kang’s Dynasty in the MCU
Set after the events of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, the upcoming MCU threequel follows Scott Lang/Ant-Man and Hope van Dyne/The Wasp as they are accidentally sucked into the Quantum Realm with Hope’s parents Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne and Scott’s daughter Cassie Lang. Searching for a way home, the pint-sized heroes embark on an adventure that will push them beyond their limits and pit them against Kang the Conqueror. Promotional materials for Quantumania have teased that the film will be the beginning of Kang’s dynasty, which will have a major impact on the MCU moving forward, especially in the next Avengers film — 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
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Majors, who previously played a variant of Kang the Conqueror in the Loki Season 1 finale, has teased that Kang will add “real conflict” to the MCU, stating, “You’re being introduced to a new vibration in the MCU. There’s conflict – not just mano-a-mano, not just hero and villain, but ‘your way of life’ and ‘my way of life’. I’m coming for it. We’re in battle here.”
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens in theaters on Feb. 17.
Source: Via Deadline
