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Despite many outlets predicting a fairly poor performance from Marvel’s latest comic-book movie Ant-Man, Marvel’s latest superhero outing has just opened to a $56.4 million opening weekend in the US (the international tally actually brings it much higher – around $114.4m); a solid result which may not be as strong as some recent Marvel releases, but not only puts it bang in-line with industry predictions (which suggested a $50-60m bow), but actually has it tracking much higher than a number of original Marvel movies.
Obviously an origin story for a lesser hero such as Ant-Man was never going to top a huge release like Avengers: Age of Ultron, and it’d be crazy to expect to open higher than sequels such as Captain America: The Winter Solider, or Thor: The Dark World, but amazingly it is tracking higher than other popular Marvel origin movies; 23% higher than Thor and 44% higher than Captain America: The First Avenger, even outpacing the fabulous Guardians of the Galaxy in Asia.
$6m of the international takings came from right here in the UK (where Ant-Man opened at #1, and 28% above the first Captain America), and given our own Matt Wheeldon described it as “bigger and better than expected” it’s easy to see why audiences have been lining up to see Paul Rudd (Role Models) leading a brand new Marvel movie.
The strong opening, and positive tracking numbers also mean we could be very likely to see more of Ant-Man in the future, and not necessarily just from his already confirmed appearance in Captain America: Civil War. Though we’ll have to wait for word from Marvel/Disney before anything becomes official.
You can read our official Ant-Man review here.
Matt Wheeldon – @TheMattWheeldon.
Source: Deadline.
