Marvel’s Ant-Man becomes the twelfth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to open at number one in the box office.
[toggler title=”TL;DR” ]While Ant-Man is currently the number one movie at the box office at the moment, the movie made the least amount of money compared to the past eleven Marvel films. To be fair though, Ant-Man is one of the least popular/lesser known characters in the Marvel Universe. By taking that into account, the movie does deserve some credit.[/toggler]
[dropcap size=small]A[/dropcap]lmost any film company would see Ant-Man‘s $58 million debut as a major success. But Marvel, who has fielded plenty of movies that made over $100 million, probably may not. Most analysts predicted that the movie would make in somewhere between $60 and $65 million during its first opening weekend. However, it is important to remember that Ant-Man isn’t the most popular character in the Marvel Universe.
“The media expects a lot, maybe too much, from Marvel movies,” said Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “This is not a B-list character. It’s barely even a C-list one. It’s a comic book that hardly anybody collected.”
Those are some harsh words from Jeff Bock, but to be fair there are very few Ant-Man fans out there. And you can be sure that the majority of the audience members who saw the movie have never even picked up an Ant-Man comic. If the writers of the movie had taken the script to any other film company but Marvel/Disney, they probably would have laughed in their faces.
But at the same time, Ant-Man‘s box office numbers give Marvel an idea of what they may need to do or change for future movies. Their next upcoming films like Black Panther, Doctor Strange and Inhumans will have to be something special in order to be successful. Marvel was smart though, they saw how successful Guardians of the Galaxy was because of how lighthearted and comedic it was. They then applied this to Ant-Man and it definitely worked, at least in my opinion. For others, not so much.
“This sends a clear message to Marvel that they need to up the stakes a little bit,” said Bock. “This was a solid film, but it was also on a little bit of cruise control. They should have had a cameo from Iron Man or something to up the ante.”
Overall, Ant-Man did well in the box office and it seems very likely that the movie will continue to bring in more revenue for Marvel over the next coming weeks. What did you think of Marvel’s Ant-Man? Let us know in the comments below!
