Thursday Night: Ant-Man’s $6.4 Million Points to Healthy Weekend

July 17, 2015

Minions

Ant-Man posted a reported $6.4 million on Thursday evening, a healthy number for a movie that’s not a sequel. Although it sort of is a sequel, or at least sort of a franchise film. It’s certainly considered part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so looking for comparable Thursday night openings presents a bit of a challenge. The bottom line, though, looks as though the film is headed into the weekend a little ahead of expectations.

Perhaps the closest comparison film is Star Trek, which earned $7 million on Thursday night on its way to a $79.2 million opening weekend. That would put Ant-Man on pace for a $72 million debut.

Fast and Furious 6Fast and Furious 6 had a $6.5 million Thursday night, and finished the weekend with $97.4 million. If Ant-Man matched that pace, it would end up with a $100 million weekend, although that remains at the very top end of possibilities.

Finally, in many ways the best direct comparison is last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That picked up $4.6 million on Thursday night, and posted $65.6 million for the weekend. Based on that comparison, Ant-Man is headed for a weekend around $90 million.

If we take the average of those three comps, we get a weekend total of about $87 million. That seems a shade optimistic to this correspondent, but clearly on the cards at this point.

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Filed under: Midnight Previews, Ant-Man, Marvel Cinematic Universe