Ant-Man Has Solid Opening Weekend While Trainwreck Fails To Live Up To Its Title

Two very different titles debuted at the box office this weekend and both managed to secure success despite having leads (Ant-Man and Amy Schumer) that had never headlined a motion picture before. The biggest of those two new releases was Ant-Man, which made $58 million over the weekend. That's the second lowest debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but that's to be expected given that Ant-Man hasn't appeared in any other MCU film. In fact, in terms of MCU non sequels, only Iron Man and Guardians of The Galaxy have managed to open above $65 million in their opening weekends.

It's actually interesting to note how Ant-Man is only the third non-sequel superhero film (following Guardians of The Galaxy and Big Hero 6) since 2011, with all other superhero films being sequels and reboots. Therefore, it feels more appropriate to compare Scott Langs first solo cinematic outing to other non-sequel superhero endeavors rather than the gargantuan $191 million debut of Avengers: Age of Ultron. In that ballpark, it did solid business; it was down from the $65 million debuts of Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, but it narrowly outdid the opening weekends of Big Hero 6, and Fantastic Four and was further ahead of the openings of Watchmen, X-Men and Green Lantern.

So how will Ant-Man hold in the weekends ahead? With great reviews and an A Cinemascore under its belt, convention would state the film may be in for a leggy run. But frankly, each of the next three weeks bring a new summer blockbuster that could take away business from Ant-Man, though to be fair, none of them are expected to be as financially huge as Jurassic World (weirdly, the most buzzy of those three releases, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, has had underwhelming tracking so far). The future may be uncertain for Ant-Man, but it can hold its head high on having a solid opening weekend.

On the other hand, Trainwreck is likely to follow the course of past Judd Apatow comedies like Knocked Up and have an extremely leggy run at the box office, as its opening weekend showed the film has a considerable amount of buzz behind it. Trainwreck debuted to $30.2 million, which is the second biggest debut for Judd Apatow as a director. In terms of this summers R-rated comedies, it's just above the opening weekend of Spy and just below the debut of Ted 2.

 Credit this smashing opening to a great marketing campaign from Universal Studios and the fact that star Amy Schumer has a sketch TV show, Inside Amy Schumer, that's had numerous skits generate enormous buzz in recent months. Like I said, expect this one to keep rolling at the box office for weeks to come and launch Amy Schumer as an A-list comedy headliner.

In terms of holdovers, Minions lost 55% from its opening weekend for a second weekend haul of $50, a larger than usual dip that's almost unheard of for family movies. The only film in that realm to have such a  harsh dip is Shrek The Third, which lost a similar 56% in its second frame. Minions is still standing tall with a $215 million total though, and barring any more enormous plummets, should have no problem crossing $300 million by the end of its run.

Inside Out held very well this frame, coming in at fourth place and dipping only 34% for an $11.6 million weekend that brings its total gross well past $300 million. It's only the eighth original movie of all-time to crack $300 million, meaning now a quarter of original movies that cross $300 million domestically hail from PIXAR (the other PIXAR film to accomplish this feat was Finding Nemo).Another Universal movie, Jurassic World, didn't feel the brunt of Ant-Man at all, rounding out the top five while only losing 37% in its sixth(!!!!) weekend for a $611 million total.

In limited release, Mr. Holmes debuted to $2.4 million, which was enough to get it into the top 10 at number 10. That's up 15% from the opening weekend of the last Roadside Attractions release Love & Mercy and it wouldn't be shocking at all to see this Ian McKellen drama go into wide release this coming weekend. The newest Woody Allen movie, Irrational Man, also opened this weekend to disappointing results with a $188 thousand opening weekend. It'll be interesting to see if Sony Pictures Classics expands this release further; my guess is, if the studios 2014 Best Picture nominee Whiplash couldn't get a wide release, I doubt Irrational Man will get that sort of lavish treatment. But easily the most impressive of the limited release openings was Bajrangdi Bhaijaan, a motion picture hailing from India that made this impressive cume of cash in only 256 locations.

The overall total for the top 12 this weekend was $185 million, which is up 39% from last year when Dawn of The Planet of The Apes reigned supreme in its second weekend, beating out such newcomers as Planes: Fire And Rescue and Sex Tape.

For further numbers and information about this weekends box office, go here.