In a rare defense of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, it never stood a chance of topping the box office for a third consecutive weekend when Creed III was on the horizon, but another 61 percent drop for the free-falling Marvel Cinematic Universe sequel was still an alarming drop.
Things keep going from bad to worse for the Quantum Realm adventure, even if writer Jeff Loveness has been trying his hardest to claim that he’s perfectly okay with the dismal reception to the Phase Five opener, while Jonathan Majors doesn’t really seem to care as long as he gave a good performance – which thankfully he did.
Either way, Quantumania‘s nosedive is far from over, with the latest estimates indicating that it won’t even be able to crack $500 million worldwide, which would make it the lowest-grossing of the Ant-Man trilogy, not a good look when it’s also comfortably the most expensive and most important within the grand tapestry of the MCU.
On top of that, it’s also on track to wind up as the comic book conglomerate’s lowest-grossing sequel ever, as well as becoming one of the very few to have ever earned less from theaters that its immediate predecessor – and it should definitely be noted that fellow Multiverse Saga offerings Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever are among that number.
When the dust settles, Quantumania will then assume the mantle of being the worst-earning MCU movie without a pandemic-related asterisk next to its name since the first Thor all the way back in 2011, to rub even more salt into an already-gaping wound.