The higher-ups at Marvel Studios have stated that they’re not concerned by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania falling off a cliff at the box office, and writer Jeff Loveness remains adamant that he didn’t write one of the franchise’s worst-ever screenplays, but eventually they’re going to have to pull their respective heads out of the clouds and admit the truth.
The 31st installment in the cinematic universe did manage to open to over $100 million, but just seven days later it snatched the record away from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to secure the steepest week-to-week drop for any comic book adaptation to have launched in excess of nine figures, with a 69 percent decline marking a new low for the MCU.
Quantumania is also the second worst-reviewed chapter in the saga on Rotten Tomatoes, and tied with Eternals on the lowest CinemaScore rating, so trying to put a positive spin on such crushing disappointment isn’t cutting it in the eyes of the jaded fandom, and that’s putting it lightly.
If you can believe it, though, things are getting even worse. Digging into the most recent set of box office figures reveals that from its first Monday in theaters to its second, the Quantum Realm caper nosedived by almost 82 percent in the space of seven days. That’s not a good sign for either the film’s long-term prospects or the MCU at large, and there’s a distinctly high possibility that Creed III is going to obliterate Quantumania when it lands on Friday to what’s tracking to be a franchise-high opening for Rocky.