The time has come for Ant-Man and the Wasp to take center stage.
For it’s on this weekend that Marvel’s tiny-teeny sequel began its rollout across North America, and with scores of positive reviews already under its belt, we’re now learning that the sequel is off to a flyer at the domestic box office.
After collecting approximately $11M from Thursday previews – higher than Doctor Strange‘s preview night ($9M) – the estimates for its opening weekend are now in and we must say, they’re quite impressive. Though the finalized numbers won’t be here until Monday morning, it’s looking as if Ant-Man and the Wasp collected $76 million domestically and $85 million overseas, combining for a total of $161 million.
Sure, that may pale in comparison to Marvel’s other releases this year – Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War – but it’s significantly higher than the opening weekend that Ant-Man saw in 2015 ($57.2 million domestically) and is right in line with what analysts predicted ($80 million on this side of the pond). Besides, it’s not like anyone ever expected the pic to pull in massive numbers and given its budget and where expectations were set, it’s fair to say that Scott Lang’s second solo outing is a bonafide success.
As for what comes next, well, we already know that both Ant-Man and the Wasp will return next year for Avengers 4, where they’ll be teaming up with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to stop Thanos once and for all. How exactly they’ll do that remains to be seen, but with Scott and Hope said to be very important to the future of the MCU, you can bet that we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the years to come, which certainly makes us happy.
