Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania Tracking For Franchise-Best Box Office Opening

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is poised to have a massive start at the box office this weekend, with projections saying it could set a new record for the series.

Deadline reports that the movie should earn $95 million over its first three days (February 17-19) and a few million more for the four-day Presidents Day long weekend in the US to end at between $105 million-$110 million. Earlier projections had the film earning $120 million for the four-day weekend, but downward revisions are not totally out of the ordinary.

Quantumania is the first new Ant-Man movie since 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp, which earned $75.8 million over its opening weekend--that total was for a traditional three-day window. 2015's original Ant-Man made $57 million over its three-day opening weekend.

As such, Quantumania needs only to clear $75.8 million to set a record for best three-day start for the Ant-Man series.

Globally, Quantumania is expected to make about $280 million for its first box office window, including $160 million from international markets. The movie opens in overseas markets today, February 15; preview screenings in the US begin on Thursday afternoon.

One potential issue that could affect Quantumania's box office numbers is that the movie is getting lower aggregate review scores than the past two, including a 54% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 50 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic.

GameSpot's Quantumania review scored the movie a 5/10. "It's not a bad movie, per se, which is on some level probably a credit to the Marvel machine. But it definitely isn't a good one, and certainly not what Marvel needed to jumpstart a new phase in the MCU and give it a North Star to move towards," reviewer Phil Owen said.

Quantumania is directed by Peyton Reed and stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Bill Murray in his MCU debut.