ANT-MAN (Fittingly) Has a Low Opening Weekend

Okay, it’s not THAT bad. It’s fairly standard for the majority of movies. However, after the behemoth-sized opening weekends and total grosses which other Marvel movies have earned, this seems kinda small. In fact, Ant-Man has had the second-lowest opening weekend out of all the MCU movies.

Word has just hit that the current projections for the movie’s opening weekend is $58m, a few million short of the original $65m predictions. Of course, it’s only Saturday, so the final numbers won’t roll in for another two days. It’s very likely that the actual opening weekend will be over $60m, but unless it can pull $65m then it’ll remain the second-lowest opening in the MCU. Ouch. For comparison, here are the other opening weekends of Marvel films compared with their final grosses.

1) Iron Man: $98m opening/$585m globally

2) The Incredible Hulk: $55m opening/$263m globally

3) Iron Man 2: $128m opening/$623m globally

4) Thor: $65m opening/$449m globally

5) Captain America: The First Avenger: $65m opening/$370m globally

6) The Avengers: $207m opening/$1.5B globally

7) Iron Man 3: $174m opening/$1.2B globally

8) Thor: The Dark World: $85m opening/$644m globally

9) Captain America: The Winter Soldier: $95m opening/$714m globally

10) Guardians of the Galaxy: $94m opening/$774m globally

11) Avengers: Age of Ultron: $191m opening/$1.3B globally

You better all be grateful for that.

As you can tell, there’s a real range of grosses dotted around with these movies. I’m no box office analyst so I can’t really make too detailed a comment on Ant-Man‘s current gross, however I would say it’s not bad. Opening weekends aren’t usually that good an indicator of how well a movie is gonna do; Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol had a $29m opening weekend and ended up grossing $694m worldwide. Green Lantern had a $53m opening weekend and ended up with a dismal $219m worldwide. You can really never tell.

However, based on the previous Marvel grosses I would say we can expect Ant-Man‘s final gross to be somewhere in the $400m-5oom range, which is actually pretty good. We’ve been led to believe because of massive blockbuster after massive blockbuster that that’s the norm, when a few years ago movies making this much in their opening weekend was the norm. Some studios may not see this as good enough but I think Marvel will be happy, especially because this character was always gonna be a hard sell.

The reality is $58m or so is more than most of us are ever gonna earn in a lifetime, and the fact that we all sit around at our desks saying that it isn’t good enough feels kinda laughable to me. With a $130m budget Marvel can easily make their money back. To cut a long story short, Ant-Man is gonna be absolutely fine.