‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ is A More Modest Marvel, But It May Be the Summer’s Last Major Opening

It’s the first full weekend of July, but it looks like the summer’s top openers will all have opened prior to Independence Day.

The last real shot at another $100 million+ opening was this weekend’s “The Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the fourth Marvel release in five months.

It ended up with a decent but not spectacular $76 million.That would make it the lowest Marvel opener of the year, the first not to pass $100 million, and a gross below the disappointing start for “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” It’s lower than the last 10 Marvel opening weekends.

(“X-Men: Apocalypse” just over two years ago the last disappointing result.)So is this a problem? Context matters, and what’s relevant here is this is a sequel to a Marvel sub-franchise.

The first “Ant-Man” opened mid-July to an adjusted total of $63 million, so this is about a 20 percent improvement.Though this

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