Topline
“Fantastic Four: First Steps” raked in about $57 million at the domestic box office for its opening day, according to multiple outlets, marking the year’s second-largest opening day so far and a win for Marvel and Disney about a year after they announced a reduction in film and TV show quantity to focus on quality.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” released July 25. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
Key Facts
The roughly $57 million “Fantastic Four: First Steps” generated at the domestic box office Friday fell narrowly short of the opening day for “A Minecraft Movie” ($57.11 million) and just topped opening day for DC Comics rival “Superman” ($56.1 million), according to Variety.
The film has netted about $106 million globally after securing $49.2 million overseas, setting itself up for an opening weekend of around $125 million, the same figure achieved by “Superman” earlier this month.
“Fantastic Four: First Steps” is receiving praise from critics and fans alike, boasting an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.6/10 on IMDb.
With a production budget of about $200 million, the movie will need to keep pace with ticket sales to turn a profit, as Marvel’s two other releases from this year, “Captain America: Brave New World” and “Thunderbolts*,” both lost money at the box office despite the latter film’s positive reception.
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Surprising Fact
With its opening weekend alone, “Fantastic Four: First Steps” out-earned the entire domestic run of “Fantastic Four” (2015), an adaptation of the heroes that flopped hard at the domestic box office ($56.1 million) and received poor ratings.
What To Watch For
“Fantastic Four: First Steps” will need to gross over $333.5 million to overtake the run of “Fantastic Four” (2005), which was released during a turning point for comic book movies that took audiences by storm throughout the 2000s.
Key Background
“Fantastic Four: First Steps” is the last of three Marvel movies released this year and filmed a few months after Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company would reduce output of Marvel movies and TV shows, making the announcement after a run of shows and films received underwhelming viewership and/or box office numbers. Iger told investors last year Disney was “slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three.” Marvel’s next movie is slated to release almost a full year from now, with “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” hitting theaters next summer before “Avengers: Doomsday” in December.