Much has been made of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania suffering the biggest second weekend drop in Marvel Cinematic Universe history, and rightly so.
The kickoff to Phase Five has continued the downward spiral that’s dogged the franchise throughout its lackluster Phase Four, leaving even the most staunch of supporters concerned that it’s a decline that may not be arrested. One major thing that’s been overlooked in the wake of Quantumania‘s commercial free-fall is that it’s merely the latest in an ongoing trend.
The 69 percent plummet suffered by Peyton Reed’s threequel might be the MCU’s heftiest tumble, but all seven of the steepest week-to-week drops have occurred since the beginning of the Multiverse Saga. You can try and put a couple of pandemic-flavored asterisks next to them, but facts are facts.
Prior to Avengers: Endgame, the previous benchmark was the 62.2 percent dip of Spider-Man: Homecoming. Since then, every single Phase Four feature – and subsequently Quantumania – has nosedived between 62.3 percent and 69.9 percent, which is a damning statistic that should theoretically be keeping Kevin Feige up at night.
Eternals fared the best out of the lot, with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (63.3), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (67), Spider-Man: No Way Home (67.5), Thor: Love and Thunder (67.7), and Black Widow (67.8) racking up the sky-high percentiles in the interim.
The seven largest week-to-week dropoffs in the history of a 15 year-old franchise that’s 31 movies deep happening in something seriously approximating sequential order is as eye-opening as it is jaw-dropping, and paints a very worrying picture of just how the perception of the all-conquering comic book juggernaut could be shifting as the deluge of content continues to suffer from lukewarm reactions.