Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania conquers the box office with $104 million
Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania buzzed to the top spot at the box office during opening weekend, flying past the first two installments of the trilogy led by Paul Rudd.
The third installment of the superhero flick also starring Evangeline Lilly and Jonathan Majors (in his big screen debut as Kang the Conquerer) opened at No. 1 with a mighty $104 million at the domestic box office, according to Comscore. It also debuted in the top spot globally with $225.3 million and an expected $239.3 million through the long weekend.
Quantumania's numbers crush the debut of the first installment, 2015's Ant-Man ($57 million), and its sequel, 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp ($75 million).
In the third installment, Scott Lang (Rudd) and his longtime partner Hope (Lilly), a.k.a. the Wasp, are sucked into the Quantum Realm alongside Lang's teenage daughter Cassie and Hope's parents Hank (Michael Douglas) and Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), where strange new creatures and adventures await, including Majors' villain first glimpsed in the debut season of Disney+'s Loki.
Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios Paul Rudd and Jonathan Majors in 'Ant-Man and the Wasp" Quantumania'
In her B review, EW critic Leah Greenblatt contends that returning director Peyton Reed "sometimes gets swallowed by the whirling spectacle of it all: a ringmaster overtaken by pew-pew battles and talking space blobs;" however, "this Ant-Man is clever enough to be fun, and wise enough not overstay its welcome. Who better understands the benefits, after all, of keeping it small?"
In second place at the box office is another franchise sequel, James Cameron's Avatar: The Way of Water, which has become the third highest-grossing movie of all time during week 10 in theaters with a grandiose cume of $2.2 billion worldwide. Cameron is now responsible for three of the top four highest-grossing global films: the first Avatar (at No. 1) and Titanic (at No. 4).
Magic Mike's Last Dance came in third with an additional $5.5 million, bringing the domestic total to $18 million. The stripper saga led by Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek was followed by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish at No. 4, which earned an additional $5.2 million. The grand domestic total is now at $166 million. M. Night Shyamalan's horror film Knock at the Cabin rounded out the top five with an additional $3.9 million, scaring up $30 million in all.
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