Huge opening weekends have become standard for Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, but the flip side of that is steep second weekend drops, and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" is set to continue that trend. According to Variety, "Quantumania" plummeted 82 percent Friday-to-Friday and is now projected for a $30 million second weekend, which would be a 72 percent drop from its opening Friday-to-Sunday gross on Presidents' Day weekend. Per Deadline, it would also surpass Ang Lee's "Hulk" (69.7 percent) as the worst second weekend drop ever for a Marvel movie.
Marvel Studios movies are front-loaded by design. Since studios keep a larger cut of ticket sales from the opening weekend box office than theaters (whose percentage increases in subsequent weekends), Marvel markets its MCU releases as big events, with "true believers" expected to see them as soon as they come out. Each movie typically contains big spoilers in the forms of cameos and reveals, and Marvel officially lifts the embargo on spoilers after just one week. In the case of "Quantumania," for example, the surprise return of a certain character was a closely-guarded secret up until release, but Marvel Studios debuted a character poster revealing their face on the following Friday.
The message is pretty clear: if you don't see the movie on opening weekend, you only have yourself to blame for getting spoiled. "Spider-Man: No Way Home," a veritable minefield of cameos and surprises, scored a staggering $260 million debut — yet even with positive reviews and an A+ CinemaScore it dropped 67.5 percent in its second weekend. The higher they fly, the harder they fall. Even accounting for this pattern, though, "Quantumania" presents slightly more cause for concern.
Is Marvel Fatigue Finally Setting In?
The concept of "Marvel fatigue" became a bit of a running joke among box office analysts as Marvel Studios movies went from strength to record-breaking strength at the box office, but there are signs of it becoming a reality. With the expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into Disney+ series like "Loki" (which marked the debut of "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" villain Kang the Conqueror), fans now have even more storylines to keep up with on top of the 30 movies that preceded "Quantumania." While the latest MCU release has scored the highest opening weekend for an "Ant-Man" movie so far, it also had a considerably larger production budget, estimated to be around $200 million.
On top of tepid reviews, "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" received a B CinemaScore from direct audience polling, a sharp drop from the A and A- of the first two movies, respectively, and tied with "Eternals" for the lowest CinemaScore in the MCU. Last year, both "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and "Thor: Love and Thunder" received B+ scores. Only "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" bucked the B trend with an A score. It also had the lowest second weekend drop out of the 2022 MCU movies (63 percent, compared to 67 percent for "Multiverse of Madness" and 68% for "Love and Thunder").
As Marvel starts to set up its next two big team-up movies — "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" in 2025 and "Avengers: Secret Wars" in 2026 — it's looking more and more like this franchise may have peaked with "Avengers: Endgame" and is now on a gentle downhill slide. Of course, the Avengers have beaten the odds before.
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