Is Ant-Man 3 a Flop? Crunching the Numbers

When Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came out on President's Day it looked like a hit, with its $106 million take in the first three days and the $120 million it picked up over the four-day weekend at the North American box office--a feat that seemed the more impressive in as Ant-Man has always been a "second-string" character. (Ant-Man is not Spider-Man, after all. Or Iron Man or Black Panther or Captain America or Captain Marvel or Thor or even Dr. Strange . . .) Still, a couple of weekends later the view of the film as "hit" (commercially, at least; the critics liked it a lot less than its predecessor) gave way to a view of the film as "flop," not only in the eyes of the professional Marvel-bashers (e.g. those who hate Disney's "woke" turn and are eager for evidence of the audience rejecting it), but even quite mainstream observers ordinarily well-disposed to the brand.*

Of course, those discussing these matters for a broad audience rarely crunch the numbers in any rigorous way, at best citing a figure or two, but the truth is that this is easy enough to do on the basis of conveniently available data--like the stats at Box Office Mojo--with an obvious place to start what prompted that change of opinion, namely the sharp drop in gross between the first weekend and the second. That drop was indeed dramatic, some 70 percent between the first and second Friday-to-Sunday periods. Still, one should put it into perspective. Ant-Man 3 was a "threequel," and not to some long-awaited follow-up to a record-breaking "New Classic," but the not-so-long-ago last film in one of the weaker component franchises of the exceedingly prolific Marvel Cinematic Universe; with that movie also debuting on a four-day holiday weekend. One expects such a film's take to be very front-loaded indeed--and the gap with the second weekend to show it--as seen with the preceding Ant-Man film, which had a 62 percent drop between the first and second weekends. The 70 percent drop Ant-Man 3 had does not seem very much worse in the circumstances (and even less so when compared with the franchise's other post-pandemic releases).**

Still, if the significance of the drop can be exaggerated one ought not to rush to dismiss it either. The days and weeks that followed bore out the impression of a faster fade for Ant-Man 3, with the result that 28 days on, if running ahead of Ant-Man 2 in current dollar terms ($202 million to $189 million), was about a ninth behind it in inflation-adjusted, real dollar terms (the prior film's $189 million more like $226 million), with the decline the more striking as Ant-Man 2 was, again, not too leggy itself. This is still not a disaster, but no great success, either, given what it bodes for the final take. Ant-Man 2 finished with about $217 million, or $259 million adjusted for inflation. Standing at $202 million after last Thursday, with the movie unlikely to make so much as $5 million over this weekend, it is all but certain to finish well short of Ant-Man 2's inflation-adjusted gross, doing well to finish up in the vicinity of $220 million.

All the same, in considering this it is worth remembering that in making and distributing Ant-Man 3 Disney/Marvel is not only counting on the North American market, but the global market, where Marvel's appeal has long been strong, and which has redeemed many a stateside disappointment. Indeed, it is worth recalling that Ant-Man 1 and Ant-Man 2 each made twice as much as their American take overseas, a fact crucial to the franchise's continuation. Adjusted for inflation Ant-Man 2 added to its rough quarter-billion dollar North American take a half billion more dollars in those international markets (its $406 million 2018 take abroad equal to $484 million in today's terms). Were Ant-Man 3 to manage the same one would not look on it too unfavorably.

So how has it been doing there?

Alas, not nearly so well as that. The movie has, at last check, made just $250 million--and may not have much more left to collect. After all, when Ant-Man 2 came out in U.S. its release in many important markets (among them Britain, Japan and of course China) came only a month later (indeed, almost two months later in the case of Japan and China). By contrast Ant-Man 3 was released in pretty much every major market at the same time, so far from waiting and seeing how it plays overseas we have already seen that, with the resulting numbers not encouraging. (Consider the example of China. Where Ant-Man 2 picked up $120 million in China in its first four weeks--the equivalent of $140 million today--thus far it has collected less than $40 million.)

Globally I simply do not see Ant-Man picking up another $250 million, or even $150 million abroad. Some are now suggesting that it will not get much past the half billion dollar mark, if that. This would make it the lowest-grossing of the Ant-Man movies in real terms, and even current-dollar terms, with this the more problematic given the $200 million production budget. While movie budgets are, again, often a matter of dubious, loss-claiming accounting, and often frayed by subsidy and production placement, while movie revenues are over time supplemented by revenue streams from home video, television, merchandising, etc. that enable even flops to get "into the black" after the passage of enough time, let us take the cited figure at face value, and stick with the rule of thumb that a profit on the theatrical run requires the gross of four to five times that figure (while anyway being important because a good theatrical run is what makes people buy your merchandise and want to pay streaming fees and the rest anyway). According to the resulting calculation the movie needed to make something in the $800 million to $1 billion range--about what it would have made if it bettered the inflation-adjusted take of Ant-Man 2 by even ten percent or so, and at least half again what it actually seems likely to collect. Even considering the possible compensations of other funding and revenue streams that gap between where it stands now and what it might take to "break even" yawning.

What does all this add up to in the end? That Ant-Man 3's North American gross, if initially impressive, dropped sharply after its opening weekend, not only showing disappointing legs but making for a disappointing total--but only moderately so. The real problem is the overseas performance of the movie, which positively crashed compared with Ant-Man 2's performance. (Rather than making a sixth less than Ant-Man 2, the movie may make more like two-fifths less elsewhere--falling from nearly $500 million in today's terms to under $300 million.) The latter goes a much longer way to putting a big dent in the movie's earnings, and Disney's balance sheets--with, interestingly, this more important part of the story (financially, anyway) scarcely being talked about at all.

* The critics gave Ant-Man 2 an 87 percent ("Fresh") Tomatometer rating. By contrast Ant-Man 3 rated just 47 percent (with the "Top Critics" score falling even more sharply, from 83 to 39 percent).
** According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index inflation calculator Ant-Man 2's $75.8 million in July 2018 is roughly equivalent to $90.5 million in February 2023 terms.