FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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'Ant-Man and Wasp' builds buzz at the box office

'Ant-Man and Wasp' builds buzz at the box office

Marvel's "Ant-Man and the Wasp" swatted away the competition over the weekend to log $75.8 million in domestic ticket sales, box office data showed on Monday.

The superhero movie has outpaced the opening weekend for 2015's "Ant-Man" by about a third, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported.

The 20th release in Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe sees ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) languishing under house arrest in San Francisco after being caught as his shrinkable superhero alter-ego fighting some of the other Avengers in "Captain America: Civil War" (2016).

Struggling to balance home life and his responsibilities as Ant-Man, he's confronted by old flame Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), alias the Wasp, with an urgent new mission.

The dynamic insect duo far surpassed sales for the weekend's runner-up, Universal's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," which is in its third week and has already passed the $1 billion mark globally.

The movie, which took $28.6 million, has Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard struggling to contain dinosaurs rescued from a tropical Pacific island and sheltered temporarily at a California mansion.

A shade behind at $28.4 million was "Incredibles 2" -- a big enough weekend to push the superhero adventure past Pixar stablemate "Finding Dory" (2016) as the top-grossing animated film of all time.

Written and directed by Brad Bird, who helmed the original, the sequel has earned $503.8 million at home and another $268.5 abroad.

Fourth spot went to another Universal-distributed film, the newly released "The First Purge," at $17.4 million.

The dystopian horror -- the fourth movie in the series -- is a prequel set during the original "purge," a 12-hour period when all crime is legal but certain government officials may not be harmed.

In fifth was Sony's "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" with $7.6 million in its second week. The action thriller has Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin teaming up to fight drug cartels smuggling terrorists across the Mexican border.

All the top five were sequels or prequels, Exhibitor Relations noted.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

"Uncle Drew" ($6.6 million)

"Ocean's 8" ($5.1 million)

"Tag" ($3 million)

"Won't You Be My Neighbor?" ($2.6 million)

"Deadpool 2" ($1.7 million)

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