• by Wayne Friedman , March 6, 2023

MGM’s “Creed III” over-delivered on its opening weekend with a $58.7 million North America debut, according to Comscore -- easily outdistancing the winner for the last two weekends, Walt Disney/Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

Film analysts were estimating that the “Creed III” box office would hit $36 million to $40 million.

This was the best result for the “Creed” franchise so far. The original “Creed” in 2015 pulled $29.6 million in revenue, while 2018’s “Creed II” scored $35.5 million. The “Creed” series is a spinoff of the “Rocky” franchise.

Total global revenue for the first weekend now amounts to $100.5 million, which Comscore Senior Media Analyst Paul Dergarabedian says is an “exceptional” result for the franchise.

“Ant-Man” was in second place with $12 million. Its North American total is now $186.8 million, while globally the movie is now at $419.5 million.

“Creed III” has spent $19.4 million so far on national TV advertising, from 2,850 airings of commercials, resulting in 1.1 billion impressions, according to iSpot.tv.

For the first two months of 2023, theatrical movie national TV spending is down 24% to $256.5 million from the year before, according to iSpot. In 2022, it was at $338.4 million.

However, domestic movie box-office revenue this year is 41% higher than in 2022 -- at $1.2 billion, according to IMdb Box Office Mojo. This was largely driven by the continuing strength of “Avatar: The Way of Water” which debuted in late 2020 and more recently, “Ant-Man.”

This year’s box office January 1-March 5 start is still down 25% compared to the same period in 2020 ($1.59 billion) -- which was right before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic -- and  down 24% from 2019 ($1.56 billion).