Ant-Man And The Wasp Scores Huge Opening Weekend, Takes #1 At The Box Office

Ant-Man and the Wasp opened in most theaters this weekend, taking the top spot in North America and around the world by a landslide. The latest box office figures show it opened in 4,206 theaters in the US and Canada and collected $76 million in ticket sales, easily beating out Incredibles 2 (in second place) and Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom (in third place); The First Purge, which opened on Tuesday, brought in $17 million in ticket sales from 3,031 theaters.

International box office figures place Ant-Man and the Wasp at #1, too. It brought in $85 million overseas, placing the total box office open for the film at a massive $161 million. It shouldn't come as any surprise; all 20 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have opened at #1 and the franchise has brought in a total $17 billion in global sales, reports Variety.

The numbers place the sequel way ahead of original Ant-Man. Its North American debut brought in $57 million back in 2015. The film directly picks up the story of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and his daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) following Scott's involvement in Captain America: Civil War. It takes place before the events of Infinity War, and you can learn more about the film's timeline in the video above (and check out its after-credits scene).

Scott's two years of house arrest are almost up, but Hope drags Ant-Man back into a life of illegal heroism in a plot to save her mother, Michelle Pfeiffer's Janet van Dyne, from the "quantum realm" in which she's been stranded for 30 years. In GameSpot Universe's Ant-Man and the Wasp review, Michael Rougeau called the film fun, silly, self aware, and creative. "Filled with pseudo-science gobbledigook, crazy action, and multiple villains all vying for screen time, it's one of the most comic-booky MCU movies yet," he said. "The fates of all our favorite heroes after Avengers: Infinity War may still be up in the air, but in the meantime, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a welcome distraction."