Battle at the Box Office 2/20/23

Despite a negative critical response, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania easily took the top spot at the box office with a $100+ million opening.

Quantumania opened to $105.5 million, which is the best opening in the Ant-Man sub-series of the MCU.  For the overall MCU, that opening puts it between Spider-Man: Homecoming and Iron Man.  The Rotten Tomatoes audience score was also 84% compared to the abysmal 47% from critics, so word of mouth will probably be good going into its second weekend.  Quantumania made another $121 million outside the domestic market for a worldwide total of $226.8 million so far.  It’s also the third-best opening for a President’s Day weekend behind Black Panther and Deadpool

Avatar: The Way of Water took second place with another $6.4 million.  The movie is now the third biggest movie of all time worldwide, surpassing fellow James Cameron movie Titanic and the 9th biggest movie of all time domestically, passing Jurassic World.  The Way of Water has $657.4 million domestically and $2.243 billion worldwide.

After taking first place last weekend, Magic Mike’s Last Dance slipped to third, despite adding double the amount of theaters as last weekend.  The movie is now in 3,034 theaters and took in $5.4 million.  It only dropped 34% from last weekend so it may have legs post-Valentine’s Day.  Last Dance has $18 million domestically so far and $37.6 million worldwide.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Knock at the Cabin rounded out the top 5, with the former now just shy of $423 million worldwide and Knock at the Cabin at $47.3 million worldwide.

Titanic took a pretty steep tumble after last weekend’s anniversary re-release.  The movie slipped 65% and dropped from 3rd to 7th with another $2.4 million.

Quantumania also took the Per Theater with $24,281 in each of the 4,345 theaters it was playing in over the weekend.