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The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has had its biggest opening of the year with the release of "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." The film, starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, and Jonathan Majors, grossed a total of $225 million worldwide, with $104 million domestically and $121.3 million from overseas. However, the film only scored 47% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of two films in the 31-film Marvel universe that rank as rotten, with the other being the 2021 film "Eternals."
The film follows Ant-Man (Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Lilly) discovering the creatures of the Quantum Realm, along with her parents, Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, played by Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer. Majors plays the villain Kang. This is the third installment in the "Ant-Man" series, with the first film being released in 2015 and the sequel, "Ant-Man and the Wasp," being released in 2018, accruing over $622.7 million globally.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for date firm Comscore, sees this release as the start of a box-office resurgence. He said, "It will feel almost in the coming weeks like a pre-pandemic movie-going environment in terms of the marketplace… That’s very good news coming off a very tumultuous past two, three years. This is the start of a big many months for this industry."
The second "Avatar" film, "Avatar: The Way of Water," remains in second place behind "Ant-Man" on its 10th weekend since being released, earning $6.4 million. After being out for just 10 days, the film made $253.7 million domestically.
It remains to be seen if the other upcoming MCU films, namely "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," will have the same success as "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." However, the box office opening of "Ant-Man and the Wasp" is an encouraging sign for the future of the MCU.