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My kids and I enjoyed this movie immensely and we all felt like it was one of the best comic book movies to date with great acting, interesting characters, and a unique storyline. You can tell it isn't the highest budget action flick out there... but it does really well considering. Definitely worth seeing at the theatre.
It's number one because it barely made more than Pixels. Mission Impossible and Vacation start this week, so it's done.
I'm not sure if it's done better than expected. I think Marvel Studios expected more than 58 million the first weekend. The movie will generate some profit due mainly to overseas earnings.
Checking the box office results, I find that Antman came in at Number One for the 2ND week in a row. It's done better than expected.
Ant-Man is hitting projections rather than over-performing like say Jurassic World. Part of that is that it is a weirder character to do a movie on. When Disney first bought Marvel and was not initially getting the rights to the Marvel Studios movies, Ant-Man was the first in the pipeline as it was being worked on with the Iron Man script. When I first heard of Ant-Man, I was like "What?" And this comes from a guy who grew up watching the old Hannah Barbera Super Friends and the Marvel cartoons of the 1990's that featured a bunch of different characters whether it was Spider Woman, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Daredevil, Blade, Captain America, etc. whom didn't have their own dedicated series.
It's number one because it barely made more than Pixels. Mission Impossible and Vacation start this week, so it's done.
I'm not sure if it's done better than expected. I think Marvel Studios expected more than 58 million the first weekend. The movie will generate some profit due mainly to overseas earnings.
Isn't that how most movies are doing it these days? I think Transformers tanked last year after its initial opening weekend with mostly 60% drops. Worldwide it tripled the domestic box office with China being a big factor in its success.
When I first heard of Ant-Man, I was like "What?" And this comes from a guy who grew up watching the old Hannah Barbera Super Friends and the Marvel cartoons of the 1990's that featured a bunch of different characters whether it was Spider Woman, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Daredevil, Blade, Captain America, etc. whom didn't have their own dedicated series.
Ant-Man's a familiar name to anyone who ever read Avengers. Hank Pym's other hero aliases/codenames were Giantman and Yellowjacket (used for the name of the villain in the movie).
They went with Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man, but decided to write Pym as an old guy who was Ant-Man in the past (which he was, before Lang) rather than having them be heroes who coexisted when Pym used the Yellowjacket name. They wasted it on Cross because Edgar Wright had wanted to call him something ridiculous like "The Nanowarrior."
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Originally Posted by mkpunk
Isn't that how most movies are doing it these days? I think Transformers tanked last year after its initial opening weekend with mostly 60% drops. Worldwide it tripled the domestic box office with China being a big factor in its success.
They do make more overseas, and that usually adds up to a movie padding its coffers, but in this case it's going to be the only way Ant-Man's going to do anything beyond breaking even. It's the not the usual runaway-hit-under-the-Marvel-banner they hoped for.
Ant-Man's a familiar name to anyone who ever read Avengers. Hank Pym's other hero aliases/codenames were Giantman and Yellowjacket (used for the name of the villain in the movie).
They went with Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man, but decided to write Pym as an old guy who was Ant-Man in the past (which he was, before Lang) rather than having them be heroes who coexisted when Pym used the Yellowjacket name. They wasted it on Cross because Edgar Wright had wanted to call him something ridiculous like "The Nanowarrior."
I'll admit that I didn't know Ant-Man. I knew say golden age marvel characters from the 1990's Spider-Man due to six forgotten warriors arc to bring in Captain America which included Whizzer and Ms. America. I knew Ant-Man by the time Avengers (the movie) came out through Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes the cartoon but at the time the talk came out about it, I honestly didn't know who/what Ant-Man was. I look at people like my brother who had no idea who Iron Man was and I am sure they would have thought "Why?" much more harder than I if they heard the idea for Ant-Man.
With now knowing the Ant-Man lineage, I actually like how they handled it in the movie. Pym had baggage with slapping Wasp, they left Wasp out to cover that too and briefly touched on Yellowjacket being a deranged version of Ant-Man but combining it with Darren Cross rather than making it a deranged Pym who slapped his wife Janet and now Janet or Hope had to come to Scott to save the family business. And honestly with A.I.M. being the evil organization in Iron Man 3 and Ultron being alien rather than Pym tech, I don't think any of Ant-Man's rogue gallery would have worked as a good villain. I mean who would take Egghead seriously?
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They do make more overseas, and that usually adds up to a movie padding its coffers, but in this case it's going to be the only way Ant-Man's going to do anything beyond breaking even. It's the not the usual runaway-hit-under-the-Marvel-banner they hoped for.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a perfect example. Any chance of it breaking even is in the hands of international box office as it made about $150 million state side and only half his directly to the studio while its budget was $150 million. Ant-Man, has a similar budget but Marvel is pretty reliable in the rest of the world.
I do think Ant-Man had two problems. One is the bloodbath with the Edgar Wright issue that was compounded with Whedon leaving after Age of Ultron and then, no comic con last ditch effort push because Disney has D-23 a month later and they hit burned with the Doctor Strange let down the year before.
Isn't that how most movies are doing it these days? I think Transformers tanked last year after its initial opening weekend with mostly 60% drops. Worldwide it tripled the domestic box office with China being a big factor in its success.
Well Transformers was totally geared at the Chinese audience. They had action scenes in Hong Kong as well as Chicago. They spoke both Mandarin and Cantonese in the film. It has the increasingly obligatory scene of an American falling for the beautiful Chinese ice maiden. It was the first big budget film to make more in China ($320m) than in USA/Canada ($245m).
The only two films out of the top 50 worldwide grossing films to make more than 50% at the domestic audience is E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and the Dark Knight. And ET will fall off that list soon.
Because true accounting is a corporate secret, the unofficial break even point is usually considered when the domestic box office reaches the production budget. The studio gets to keep half of the domestic box office. Ant Man has a production budget of $130 million and has earned $109.5 million after 11 days.
The Incredible Hulk (2008) had a production budget of $150 million and earned $102.0 million after 11 days, and finished with $134.8m by the end of it's run. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) had a production budget of $140 million and earned $121 million after 11 days, and finished with $176.7m domestic.
The studio keeps much less than half of the overseas box office, from a low of 25% of the Chinese boxoffice to somewhere below 50% in other countries. While movie piracy obviously exists in the US and Canada, it is practically a way of life in some countries.
So while it is probably true to say that Ant-man is the second worst performing of the 12 Marvel Cinematic Universe films (behind The Incredible Hulk) I don't think the studio is extremely upset. It certainly didn't bomb, and they have a new character to throw into the mix.
Out and out bottom of the barrel bombs are a way of life in movies. Nobody is immune. They knew that their was a certain risk with a nearly unknown character and a lead actor known more for character parts. While that was also true of Guardians of the Galaxy, you probably aren't going to get a lightning strike repeatedly.
I mean look at Green Lantern with a production budget of $200 million and a $53m opening weekend. GL earned an addition $64m for the rest of it's run, and only $103m overseas. The actors Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are beautiful, while Paul Rudd has lovable boy next door looks, and his biggest films were Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and the Anchorman movies where he only had supporting roles. That's the kind of film that makes a studio executive go home and drink an entire bottle of bourbon.
FYI the rule of thumb when it comes to domestic box office is the studio gets half (the other half goes to the theater.) So budget-wise, a movie with a 130 million budget like next year's Gambit needs a 260 million domestic box office to break even on the budget alone. If you include promotion and advertising that will easily double it so a Gambit would now need 520 million domestic box office. This is why Mad Max: Fury Road wont likely see a sequel because the budget was $150 million and the domestic take was $151.6 which means it made only half of the budget back domestically while promotion and advertisement was untouched. I am unsure on international takes.
Actually, the break-even point entails a gross double that of the production budget and that which is spent on promoting the film.
Btw, Gambit's production budget is $155 million. The way Fox promotes their films, that thing will need to collect roughly $400 million before they can exhale. If they don't get it in theaters, they'll make it up in DVD and Blu-ray sales.
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