Fantastic Four was the subject of bad buzz before it even started shooting. No one outside of the higher-ups at 20th Century Fox wanted this movie. The internet hated it from the moment it was announced. Then came the various delays. And the massive reshoots. And the toxic reviews and a disastrous press tour. It all climaxed when director Josh Trank joined the chorus of critics, effectively shooting down his own movie. And yet, everyone assumed the film would still open okay because that’s what superhero movies, even the bad ones, tend to do. Well, not this time.
| Film | Weekend | Per Screen | ||
| 1 | Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation | $28,000,000 (-50%) | $7,021 | $107,254,000 |
| 2 | Fantastic Four | $27,000,000 | $6,758 | $27,000,000 |
| 3 | The Gift | $10,600,000 | $4,235 | $10,600,000 |
| 4 | Vacation | $8,800,000 (-40%) | $2,566 | $36,979,000 |
| 5 | Ant-Man | $7,900,000 (-38%) | $2,715 | $147,510,000 |
| 6 | Minions | $7,400,000 (-40%) | $2,370 | $302,754,000 |
| 7 | Ricki and the Flash | $7,200,000 | $4,492 | $7,200,000 |
| 8 | Trainwreck | $6,200,000 (-35%) | $2,455 | $91,001,000 |
| 9 | Pixels | $5,300,000 (-50%) | $1,851 | $57,515,000 |
| 10 | Southpaw | $4,400,000 (-42%) | $1,935 | $40,361,000 |
With an opening weekend of only $27 million, Fantastic Four is dead on arrival. The poisonous buzz from audiences will kill any chance it has of growing legs. $100 million is an impossibility. Every dollar is makes over $60 million will be a blessing. This seemingly cursed production and the truly bad movie it produced feels like a wake-up call. In an age where comic book adaptations are rampant, you can’t half-ass it. Audiences now know a stinker when they see one, even when one of the main characters is a CGI rock man.
To put it in perspective, both of Tim Story’s Fantastic Four movies (which opened in 2005 and 2007) opened to double the amount of this one. That’s rough.
The total failure of Fantastic Four overshadows the not-bad opening for The Gift, whose $10 million debut in third place isn’t too shabby for a low-key thriller that didn’t have much of a marketing push. The same could be said for Ricki and the Flash, which opened in seventh place with $7 million. Neither film is going to be a smash, but both of them emerged from this weekend looking a lot better than the latest superhero movie.
The real winner of the weekend was Tom Cruise, whose Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation topped the box office charts for its second weekend in a row, adding $28 million to its total. With $107 million in the bank, the fifth Ethan Hunt adventure is already more than halfway to the final domestic gross of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which remains the biggest film of the franchise. Unless something goes wrong, Rogue Nation is in a very strong position to top it.
The rest of the top 10 consists of a bunch of close-but-not-quites. Ant-Man is going to cross $150 million in a matter of days. Trainwreck is one more solid weekend away from hitting $100 million. Minions won’t reach the $400 million we estimated for it when it opened, but it still has a shot at beating Inside Out. Southpaw, while not a hit, doesn’t look like a total disaster now that it has $40 million under its belt. Even Vacation is looking like it won’t be complete embarrassing (but it won’t be a hit, either).
Even Pixels looks okay this weekend. At least it’s not Fantastic Four.
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