MOVIE NEWS – To make matters more grim, Ant-Man 3 was one of the worst MCU productions, not only at the box office but also in the eyes of critics and audiences.

Ant-Man 3 – or, as officially known, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – currently stands at $469.7 million worldwide. That’s usually a number that most films don’t even come close to. But that number is not enough for Marve Studios’ blockbuster budget to turn a profit. Even with a promising opening weekend. Even though it still falls short of the opening weekend of Shazam! Wrath of the Gods catastrophic level, new information suggests that the new Ant-Man won’t even cross the $500 million mark that its predecessors comfortably crossed.

According to Variety, Ant-Man 3 is “expected to fall short of the roughly $600 million needed to break even”, as most analysts nowadays double the budget of every film to account for the marketing costs of the studios before deducting the theatrical take from box office sales.

In the case of Ant-Man 3, reshoots should also be included. Given the film’s original production budget of $200 million, its financial prospects are, therefore, no better than the poor response it has received from fans and critics. These revenue projections do not consider the controversy surrounding MCU star Jonathan Majors.

By comparison, the box office receipts for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania are not much higher than Marvel Studios’ early post-Pandemic films. Examples include Black Widow ($379 million), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ($432 million) and The Eternals ($402 million). Even with the extra boost from Chinese moviegoers. Of the three films, Shang-Chi performed better due to its lower budget (reportedly $150 million). This is probably why Disney CEO Bob Iger said that Marvel Studios would pay more attention to its release policy in the future.

Seeing as films like Creed 3 and John Wick: Chapter 4 have been a worldwide hit in cinemas, it’s clear that Marvel Studios’ smaller films are no longer guaranteed successes, and the studio’s formula must be refined in the future.

Quantumania will officially be only the seventh lowest-grossing film in the MCU. However, the picture becomes more nuanced when you consider that the movies below it had much smaller production budgets and/or were held back by the pandemic.

Overall, excitement for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 seems to be higher, but perhaps the alleged poor test screenings of The Marvels should be taken more seriously. Disney’s Secret Invasion, due out on Disney Plus in June, will attempt to reverse a similar downward streaming trend.

Source: Variety