To add insult to injury, Paul Rudd and Jonathan Major’s Ant-Man 3 has the potential to be one of the worst movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which could cause Marvel to lose money.
Fans of Marvel Comics are beginning to focus their attention on the upcoming film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Mania looks to be on track to become a box office blunder for Disney and the worst entry for the pint-sized hero to date.
The current earnings for Ant-Man 3 are at $469.7 million across all territories. Although the opening weekend looks promising, Marve Studios’ blockbuster budgets require additional revenue to turn a profit. This is the case even though that revenue is typically a number that most films won’t even close to touching. In the meantime, we are still trying to reach Shazam! New information suggests that the Ant-Man threequel will fail on the scale of Fury of the Gods and that it will only be able to reach the $500 million mark, which its two predecessors easily surpassed.
According to Variety, Ant-Man 3 “is expected to fall short of the roughly $600 million needed to break even.” Most analysts nowadays double any film’s budget to account for the studios’ marketing expenses before subtracting the cut that cinemas take from ticket sales. This is the case with Ant-Man 3, which Variety reports “is expected to fall short of the roughly $600 million needed to break even.” In the case of Ant-Man 3, reshoots need to be considered, just as they did for Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam. As a result, considering the film’s original production budget of $200 million, Quantumania’s financial outlook is comparable to the negative feedback the film has received from both fans and critics. These box office projects do not consider the controversy surrounding the Marvel Cinematic Universe actor Jonathan Majors.
Even with the additional push that it received from Chinese moviegoers, Ant-Man 3’s box office haul is not significantly higher than Marvel Studios’ early post-pandemic releases such as Black Widow ($379 million), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ($432 million), and Eternals ($402 million). Shang-Chi performed the best despite having the lowest budget (reportedly $150 million). It is likely because of this that Disney CEO Bob Iger has stated that Marvel Studios will be more cautious about its spending policies moving forward.
As a result of the fact that films such as Creed 3 and John Wick: Chapter 4 are doing extremely well in theaters worldwide, it is abundantly clear that Marvel Studios’ lesser films are no longer guaranteed hits. As a result, the formula that the studio uses will need to be modified soon. Although Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Mania will officially become the seventh lowest-grossing film in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the story takes a much different turn when one considers that the only movies that have grossed less than it has had significantly lower production budgets or were hampered by the pandemic.
The consensus is that the excitement for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is higher. However, the allegedly disappointing test screenings for Marvel films ought to be taken with a greater degree of seriousness. When it debuts on Disney Plus in June, the animated series Secret Invasion will attempt to buck a similar downward trend in streaming popularity.
The movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Mania can now be seen in theaters.
Source: Variety