Ant-Man and the Wasp earned $8.4 million on its second Friday of release, dropping a record-high (for the MCU) 75% from its $33.8m opening day. That’s good, but it’s also not that farther from the 73% drop of Spider-Man: Homecoming and the 74% drops of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War. The MCU movies tend to take big Friday-to-Friday dives. Even The Winter Soldier dropped 68% on its second Friday)
That Ant-Man and the Wasp merely fell a little farther (with much smaller numbers) than Civil War and Avengers 2 may just be a byproduct of kids being out of school (and thus able to catch up on the weekdays) and two new releases that specifically target the same demographics. When you’ve got Skyscraper offering PG-13 action thrills and Hotel Transylvania 3 overperforming and offering kid-friendly comedic hijinks, that’s a tough hit for the Peyton Reed kid-friendly action comedy. This isn’t the same as Spider-Man: Homecoming taking a 62% second-weekend dive against the grimdark War for the Planet of the Apes.
Speaking of which, yes, Ant-Man and the Wasp will probably break Spider-Man‘s record for a second-weekend MCU drop (-62%). It has earned $112m in eight days and should earn $28.1m (-63%) for the weekend to give it a still-solid $132m ten-day total. Nonetheless, it has been showing exceptionally tiny legs since its opening day, and at this point, it’s essentially tied with Ant-Man (a $24 million second weekend back in 2015) in terms of day-to-day tickets-sold comparisons.
The good news is that Mama Mia! Here We Go Again and The Equalizer 2 might not be as brutal of competition. The bad news is that Mission: Impossible Fallout looks like it’s going to crush the competition in two weeks due to strong buzz and rave reviews. To be fair, Ant-Man and Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation closed out summer 2015 (alongside Straight Outta Compton). So the hope for Disney and Marvel is that A) history will repeat itself, or B) the movie will make enough overseas to still be a huge hit on its mere $160 million budget. I don’t have the overseas updates, but tomorrow’s post may be a tad more optimistic even if it continues to dive in North America and ends up under $200m domestic.