For the second weekend in a row, ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA finished in first place at the box office with a Domestic three-day gross of $32.2M. Its ten-day cume is $167M in the U.S. and Canada, with a worldwide total of well over $300M. This year’s ANT-MAN continues to out-gross both prior movies from the series, though the steep 70% drop in its second weekend is cause for some concern. The original ANT-MAN (2015) declined 56% from its opening weekend while ANT-MAN AND THE WASP (2018) dropped 62% in its week two.
We see two factors for this sharp decline. First, QUANTUMANIA opened on the Presidents’ Day holiday weekend, which boosted box office results and made it more difficult to sustain results over the next weekend. Both earlier ANT-MAN movies opened in mid-July, so they did not benefit from a holiday weekend opening.
Second, QUANTUMANIA’s critic score on Rotten Tomatoes was a very harsh 43%, whereas the earlier films received 83% and 85% Tomatometer respectively. Some media outlets have suggested that the negative response from critics struck a mortal wound to the box office prospects for the film and the ANT-MAN franchise.
Some have even suggested that ANT-MAN may drag down the entire Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We take the opposite view, seeing that QUANTUMANIA is exceeding results from the two previous ant-ANT-MAN movies, and that weekly declines will stabilize going forward such that it winds up as the highest-grossing movie in the series.
Universal’s COCAINE BEAR finished second with a better-than-expected gross of $23.1M. The movie was inspired by a 1985 true story of drug runners in a plane crash, which led to a cache of cocaine being scattered in the wilderness and eventually ingested by a black bear. The suspense comedy was directed by Elizabeth Banks and stars Keri Russel, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Ray Liotta in his final role.
The film has received positive reactions from both critics and audiences, with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 71% and 73% respectively. With a production budget of $35M, Universal is on track to enjoy a second highly profitable film release this year, with their horror hit M3GAN which opened on January 6th grossing $171M worldwide to date on a production budget of $12M. We expect strong box office grosses for COCAINE BEAR to continue for several more weeks.
Lionsgate’s JESUS REVOLUTION finished in third place on its opening weekend with a gross of $15.5M, higher than most pre-release forecasts. The movie tells the story of a youth religious movement from the 1970s and stars Kelsey Grammer and a cast of unknowns. The film’s opening weekend box office total has already exceeded its production budget of $15M. Critics have given it mixed reviews, with a mere 56% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but moviegoers are weighing in with an overwhelmingly positive 99% audience score.
This virtually guarantees a positive word of mouth for the picture, especially among the sizeable audience that turns out for movies with a religious theme. The challenge for JESUS REVOLUTION and any other religious-themed movie is to appeal to general audiences beyond this core group. As with any film, its box office prospects will depend on how well it holds up in the second week after its opening.
James Cameron’s AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER placed fourth, with an additional $4.7M in ticket sales, a weekly drop of 28% in its eleventh weekend. We cannot over-emphasize how well this picture has performed, with its amazing worldwide cume of $2.25B making it the third highest-grossing movie of all time. The other very successful Christmas holdover PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH finished in fifth place with $4.1M in its tenth weekend, a drop of only 23% from last week’s results.
The total box office for all films this weekend came in at $91.6M, which blows away the $63.3M earned on the same weekend last year when no new films of consequence opened and exhibitors had to make do with the second weekend for Sony’s UNCHARTED which earned $22.7M and UA Releasing’s DOG which earned $9.7M. Momentum for the 2023 box office continues as the current year has won out in seven out of the eight weekends compared with last year’s results.
WHERE ARE WE AS OF 2/23
After seven weeks, 2023 grosses stand at 152% compared with last year but only 75% compared with 2019.