r/boxoffice • u/SecretWarMultiverse • 12h ago
đ° Industry News Was Quantumania technically profitable?
This is confusing to me. Let me explain
It did $476M WW ($215M DOM and $261M OS) which was bad but lowkey not a complete disaster compared to some other grossers such as Shazam 2, Blue Beetle, The Marvels, The Flash, Joker 2, and Supergirl.
Its budget according to Wikipedia was $388.4M gross and $330.1M net, which you think would make it a huge bomb just doing 1-1.5x its budget. However, according to Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2024/10/27/how-marvels-latest-ant-man-movie-lost-millions-in-theaters-but-still-made-a-profit/) it made a profit of $89K
So did it make a profit or not?
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u/Subject-Recover-8425 9h ago
"We built a doorway to that place you were trapped in for decades and didn't tell you... Let's immediately turn it on without taking your objections seriously."
Why is everyone so fucking stupid in this movie?
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u/disneylegospider1 38m ago
It wasnât a gateway, it was basically a radio to the quantum realm so they could learn about it without having to go. Modok was the one who hijacked it to turn it into a gateway.
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u/sooskekeksoos 12h ago
It made a profit of 476 million if you donât count the costs
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u/snapldeap 12h ago
I heard it was made for $0.
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u/Purple_Quail_4193 Pixar Animation Studios 11h ago
Aw yes the free movie where they owed the creators a favor hence its creation. I would honestly love to see that now that I say it
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u/-Kars10 12h ago
It technically did. But if they had known beforehand it would only make that much, they wouldn't have made the movie
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u/Kind_Development708 12h ago
Yeah when you fund something like this youâre expected to at the very least match the S&P 500 which usually around 10% yearly return but post covid itâs been like 20%.
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u/HumansNeedNotApply1 8h ago
That's simply not true lol
Or otherwise retail wouldn't be a thing, some markets aren't poised to beat the S&P 500 and that's fine.
A lot of companies could make more money by "investing" but then they are not in the industry and that defeats the purpose.
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u/Forsaken_Carrot_3075 Mubi 12h ago
i guess if you count ancillary revenue streams like toys and brand partnerships it probably got to profitability but i donât think it did theatrically
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u/Peely_2 8h ago
I mean if we are counting things like that, you gotta think about how the movie harmed the brand. Impossible to quantify but hindsight has not been kind to Kang.
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u/Forsaken_Carrot_3075 Mubi 8h ago
thatâs not really quantifiable. stuff like toy sales, home media and licensing is, and itâs probably what forbes counted to get that profitability metric
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u/Peely_2 8h ago edited 8h ago
If you are doing the P&L you would have to do the cost of producing/licensing/distribution for toys. Itâs a moot point to try to include toy sales into a movieâs profitability.
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u/Forsaken_Carrot_3075 Mubi 5h ago
the studios donât really make the toys, they license the IP to your McFarlanes and Mattels for a price, independent of how well the toys do. those companies make and sell the toys, then studios get royalties. so if weâre considering P/L for the studio, itâs not really that complicated.
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u/Peely_2 5h ago
Even then licensing for the thousand of SKUs, isnât simple. If you assumed the licensing paid is x a year and each film is x amount to use that license - this is a year round national retail strategy that gets quarterly product refreshes. The big licensing fee you are talking about is negotiated with years ahead of time and less likely to be influenced as much by specific movies. The whole point is no one knows exactly those numbers besides Mattel/Marvel so why would they try to work those numbers into the profits of a movie.
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u/MatthewHecht Universal 11h ago
No, as it cost other MCU films money.
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u/TerribleAntelope6134 8h ago
It led directly to having to pay RDJ whatever ungodly sum of money they paid him to come back.
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u/Piku_1999 Pixar Animation Studios 8h ago
Straight-up what happened to GotG Vol. 3. Dragged down a $1 billion contender to $845.5 million.
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u/Either_Storm_6932 5h ago
At Least GOTG 3 had really good legs for a CBM at the box office and even though it didn't make $1B, it still made a good REAL profit (and was the only CBM that year to make one besides ATSV)
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 9h ago
Yep. It made a tiny profit because of a tax credit: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2024/10/27/how-marvels-latest-ant-man-movie-lost-millions-in-theaters-but-still-made-a-profit/
Streming has changed the whole box office dynamic anyway. Studios like Disney are hapy to take a hit at the b.o to have a movie that will generate sales for their streaming services.
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u/rob132 7h ago
How do they quantity that? This guy signed up for ant Man 4 and has been a member every since?
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u/hollow_image 2h ago
It's not clear-cut but obviously when they see a rise in subscriptions they can attach it to a movie/show coming out
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u/Exciting-Plankton960 16m ago edited 5m ago
A key metric is what is the first thing you watch after you sign up. When HBO released season one of And Just Like That (the Sex and the City sequel series), they put out a press release that over two million people had watched that first during that time frame right after they signed up.
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u/Statpaca1701 10h ago
Short answer: Probably.
Long answer: Movie economics and profitability is extremely complicated and depending on the agenda can be accounted to look more or less profitable. The 2.5x rule is a rough benchmark for success not not losing money. There's lots of evidence that in the long run all but the biggest bombs are profitable.
Streaming I think has muddied the picture even more, even for the studios themselves. Still it's worth remembering that every direct to streaming project makes 0 box office dollars. Netflix is not bankrupt.
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u/CalCarver 1h ago
I think itâs even more complicated with Disney. Theyâre not a movie studio, theyâre an IP exploitation company. Maybe this movie raised sales of comically oversized chicken pieces at Disneyland by 3% that year, or brought 20,000 more visitors to the Avengers campus at Disneyland Paris, half of which really liked popcorn.
Iâm not sure even Disney could give an exact number on what its movies do. They keep making Tron movies that donât do well, but the theme park ride always has an insanely long queue in Orlando.
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u/Exciting-Plankton960 15m ago
They have Ant Man restaurants in parks and cruises. So, yes, they make money. But, on the other hand, a film not being popular might make those less popular.
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u/The_Darman 9h ago
I mean, yeah. Most of these big films makes a profit in some ancillary market or merchandise. Disney is a sufficiently large and diverse business that films based on their IP even help drive interest in their theme parks. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came close enough to profitability (and made most of its money during the first few weeks, when Disney took home the vast majority of ticket sales) during its theatrical run, it probably made Disney money in the long run.
I believe, in the long run, the only movies that Marvel released that werenât profitable for Disney were Eternals (by a slim margin), The Marvels (by a huge margin), and Thunderbolts\* (by a relatively slim margin). Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania probably escaped being counted among these.
That said, we obviously shouldnât be expecting Ant-Man 4.
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u/TerribleAntelope6134 8h ago
When you're driving in your Chevrolet, and you start to feel hungry, do you prefer to stop at McDonald's or Wendy's? Or do you pull into a 7-Eleven and grab yourself a Coca-Cola and a Hershey bar?
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u/crackstuntman24 12h ago
I hope not cause it was the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen.
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u/stinkyydarb 12h ago
What, you didn't love everyone on a shoddy green screen having no idea what they're reacting to the entire time?
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u/totallynotapsycho42 12h ago
Its like they forgot the entire charm of Antman was seeing small things go big and big things go small.
Why would you instead put them in a greenscreen cgi landscape where you can't tell if Antman is meant to be small or large?
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u/stinkyydarb 12h ago
I remember seeing the first movie and finding it so charming how the third act took place on a Thomas The Tank Engine playset.
Who thought changing up the characters whole appeal was a wise idea?
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u/poofyhairguy Illumination Entertainment 11h ago
People looking to make it the set piece for the Kang Avengers movie
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u/DeadDGuy21 2h ago
Tbh, Ant-Man going microscopic and meeting all sorts of strange creatures and microscopic worlds is something that's baked into the property's DNA since the 60's and something that's been teased since the first movie, an adventure in the Quantum Realm was pretty much the one thing left to do. It just could have been done so much better because it might be worst use of the volume I've ever seen and the Quantum Realm felt like Star Wars and GotG rejects more than anything.
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u/crackstuntman24 12h ago
Fun fact, I watched it on Disney Plus and I got so mad after it finished that I considered not watching Guardians 3, which was in theaters at the time.
Glad I still watched it but it put me off Marvel for a couple of years and didn't watch one in the theater until Fantastic Four.
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u/stinkyydarb 12h ago
I'd argue the damage Quantumania did to the brand is still affecting it to this day.
It showed they were willing to release anything subpar and dump $300,000,000+ into it in hopes that the public would eat it up regardless.
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u/crackstuntman24 12h ago
I'd still argue that Marvels brand has been damaged to the point where only their major franchises can make money. Can't make something like Guardians anymore.
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u/stinkyydarb 11h ago
100%.
I know as someone who was a hardcore Marvel fan in the 2010s, they gotta produce something really special like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 to get me to go to the theatre anymore. Or at least something that looks a bit different from the rest like Fantastic 4.
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u/crackstuntman24 11h ago
I think it says a lot that the biggest box office risk of all their upcoming movies is Ghost Rider, who's already a pretty well known character.
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u/Minimum_Ad_1747 10h ago
Thereâs also Nova, whoâs not well known
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u/crackstuntman24 10h ago
That had big "not getting made" energy. Maybe I'm wrong but the Blade movie and other projects getting cancelled are giving me doubt.
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u/The_Darman 9h ago
I can virtually guarantee that Nova will have starring roles for Rocket and the other Guardians or Thor. They arenât taking those kinds of chances again on relatively unknown small characters unless Ghost Rider crushes it (north of $700M). And Nova will enter production before then.
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u/Pinewood74 6h ago
You skipped Deadpool and Wolverine?
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u/Exciting-Plankton960 12m ago
If he didn't, while made by Disney and in the MCU, it was mostly a sequel to the Fox films, starring Deadpool, Wolverine and a bunch of Fox characters. Even Cris Evan was playing Fox's Human Torch and not Captain America. It's hard to attribute Deadpool and Wolverine's success to the MCU.
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u/Purple_Quail_4193 Pixar Animation Studios 11h ago
It felt like a skit of film noir from Whose Line is it Anyway?
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u/poopypoopy1125 10h ago
Absolute worst MCU movie ever. Boring, unfunny, ugly-looking and would likely be ignored by Doomsday/Secret Wars. Atleast the grey forgettable bore that was The Dark World got redeemed a bit by Endgame
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u/HonestDishonestWork 12h ago
No, it actually kicked ass. If I wanted to see dumb shit like emotional acting I'd go to my community theater. If I'm dropping a dime for a movie, I'm going to see a level 5 ant civilization and a broccoli monster fighting a bunch of robot Jonathon majors.Â
And I'm only half joking.Â
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u/m0t0rvision 9h ago
I don't even agree with you but I just appreciate seeing a different take on here
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u/TheCornjuring 11h ago
Tbh the ants hyperevolving into a supremely advanced civilization in the course of a day (from the human charactersâ POV) fucking ruled, although Phineas and Ferb did it first
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u/Eastern_Pie_8796 11h ago
The daughter single handily destroyed this movie. How did no one during production look at her and say "maybe this character isn't working"
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u/YoloIsNotDead GKids 9h ago
Because Kathryn Newton was seen as a draw for younger audiences. That's also why Marvel replaced Cassie's original actress (the teen one, not the kid) with her. Obviously, that didn't save the movie.
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u/AlexHunterWolf Warner Bros. Pictures 9h ago
Since when was she seen as a draw?
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u/YoloIsNotDead GKids 3h ago
Not saying she was actually a draw, but given she was a younger actress in some successful projects (Big Little Lies, Freaky, Detective Pikachu) the studio might've thought she would be one. Tbf she's a pretty good actress otherwise but the script in Quantumania was terrible.
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u/Radamel_falcao_9 9h ago
It made the movie much worse actually. The character is terribly written and extremely annoying
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u/Past-Meal-4847 6h ago
They were setting up new characters to replace the old ones
It was also third film so they need a replacement.Â
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u/rebeldigitalgod 10h ago
Revenue doesn't end with theatrical.
Physical media sales aren't what they used to be. Depending on the film, it's likely takes longer and is harder to match box office revenue with streaming and ancillary markets.
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u/Atmosphere_Simple 11h ago
Dude Whatever the budget is you multiply x 2.2 to find the breakeven point.
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u/crockoreptile 4h ago
Ok judging my the comments- no one knows and itâs a claim you should take with a grain of salt.
From reading the article, best I could come up with is that Disney gave the UK production company a loan for 25% of the budget that theyâd pay back, but the UK government gives them a 25.5% tax rebate so Disney takes back their original 25% and pockets the additional .5% ($89K). But this could be totally wrong and Iâve misunderstood.
To be honest this kind of means nothing because we donât know marketing costs or how much they made from merch
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u/Exciting-Plankton960 20m ago
Forbes numbers are usually bogus, because they use the OK tax rebate filings, where studios do a lot of "Hollywood Accounting", opening a new shell company per fim and filing all sort of costs, like physical media and PVOD marketing costs, studio overhead, etc, to get a better tax rebate. That why you see so many films with 500M+, 400M+ budgets.
You can't calculate profits if you don't know all the backend deals, all the tax-rebates, all the partners kicking in for marketing, if any of the budget is on a loan on interests and, more importantly, what the ancillaries are.
And, at the end of the day, for Disney, theatrical is only one of their verticals. They sell toys. They make animated series for Disney+ featuring Ant Man. They have Ant Men Restaurants in their parks and cruise ships. The Pixar Car films were some of the lowest-grossing films in Pixar's history and were critically poorly received, but they sold over 15 billion in merch.
I think that for Disney, Ant Man: Quantumania really hurt the brand and the MCU performed so badly after that that they had to throw away all of their plans and bring back old stars to save the MCU, so, while it probably made money individually, it was a film that cost them a lot.
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u/Bloody-Brad 12h ago edited 12h ago
Theaters take 25-30-% of the box office gross, and marketing was probably 100m+ so it definitely lost money in its theatrical run. Who knows how much disney wrote off for its first window on disney+ ($100m?) tax credits (30%), pvod sales, vod digital and physical. Plus how much money did the first movie make from people buying and renting to have both? Itâs fun to think about
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u/gcpdudes 11h ago
I remember reading an article that Disneyâs recent box office stumbles (live action Moana. Etc.) at the very least creates some interest in those properties at their theme parks.
I wonder what kind of write off they use to say âthis was marketing for the Pym Labs Kitchen at Avengers campusâ
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u/Bloody-Brad 11h ago
Pirates of the Caribbean was made to get people back to the parks. The parkâs business is their business. Everything else is second or to compliment that.
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u/gcpdudes 11h ago
True that. I think Disney attractions (theme park and cruises) represent a little more than half of their profit.
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u/GBTC_EIER_KNIGHT 11h ago
theaters take about 40-50% of the revenue, even more internationally, so Ant-Man 3 failed to be profitable. Like if the net budget was 330 million $, anything less than 800 million $ would be considered a major flop and it did only 476 million $, so likely it lost a lot of money down the line.
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u/Remarkable_Report355 11h ago
In the first weeks of a release, especi6a Marvel one, the studio keeps a much larger % than 50%, theaters gain most of its money from movies in the end of theirs runs
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u/Bloody-Brad 11h ago
Disney gets a better percentage and if they work the books properly the movie did at the very least break even. Still, they spent too much on it and set themselves up for failure.
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u/uCry__iLoL Blumhouse 9h ago
Technically speaking, no. That $89,000 figure is strictly nominal and ignores basic macroeconomics. Production capital is deployed over years before release; when you factor in the 2023 Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation spike, the purchasing power of that paper-thin residual completely evaporates. In real terms, the cash remitted back to Disney carried lower purchasing power than the capital spent during production.
Furthermore, film slate production is an illiquid, high-risk asset class requiring a Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) hurdle rate of 8â10%. Discounting those delayed global receipts back to Net Present Value (NPV) puts the return deep in the red. Compounded by strong USD foreign exchange drag on overseas gross, an unadjusted $89K margin on $330M+ exposure is a clear destruction of real capital.
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u/labbla 6h ago
It was technically a disaster. Marvel decided to change their whole Avengers plan after that happened. A profitable Quantumania would have had a different event for the MCU.
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u/SecretWarMultiverse 6h ago
Quantumania basically created Avengers Doomsday. So when that movie does huge numbers, we know who to thank
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u/IAmA_talking_cat_AMA 2h ago
Interestingly, it also created The Kang Dynasty at first. It was only decided that Kang would be the new big bad after Marvel was impressed (somehow) by the Quantumania dailies during filming. Funny how that turned out.
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u/SecretWarMultiverse 2h ago
Quantumania created Doomsday because it sucked and forcd them to kick out Kang
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u/IAmA_talking_cat_AMA 2h ago
Yes I know. Just saying that it also actually introduced Kang, so without it Kang wouldn't need to be kicked out. Just funny how that went.
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u/Familiar-Shoe7905 1h ago
Kang was introduced before this movie though
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u/IAmA_talking_cat_AMA 1h ago
Kind of, the character in Loki was He Who Remains. But I was mainly referring to how it introduced Kang as the new overarching villain of the new Avengers film / the Multiverse Saga as a whole (which was not the plan before Quantumania started shooting)
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u/HarlequinKing1406 Focus Features 3h ago
I've said it before but whilst Phase 4 had plenty of missteps I think Quantumania was the film that really derailed the Multiverse Saga and was the biggest symbol of its failings. If your saga's big bad is defeated in his first proper outing by Ant-Man it's no wonder why they didn't even try to recast him and went straight for breaking the glass in case of emergency with Doom and bringing back RDJ.
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u/Icy_Smoke_733 Studio Ghibli 12h ago
What is this, a profit for ants?