Disney’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps continues its disappointing run at the box office, pulling in an estimated $66 million globally since last Sunday—a drop of roughly 55% from the prior week.
Over the weekend, the film saw a 59% drop domestically from its second weekend and earned $15.78 million from 3,600 locations, bringing its North American total to $230.70 million. At this rate, the film is likely to finish its domestic run somewhere around $260 million to $265 million, which by no means is ideal for an MCU film that costs around $200 million, especially at a time when the overseas audiences, Asia specifically, have completely moved on from superhero films.
Internationally, it has added about $17.5 million, pushing its overseas total to $203.8 million and its global tally to $434.5 million. If the film maintains this pattern of steep 55% week-to-week decline globally, it is on track to finish its theatrical run in the $490–495 million range worldwide.
For this film to not even reach its breakeven point of $500 million is a disastrous outcome for the MCU, especially considering the other two films that the MCU released this year also failed to do so and were significantly off their breakeven points.
Sure, the fans always appreciate a good film, and both Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps have seen a positive reception by the fans and critics alike, but it just does not seem like the general audience cared much for either of these films. The Fantastic Four’s second weekend drop is hard evidence of this damning fact.
It’s also not a secret that Disney and Marvel Studios are not even in the business of breaking even; they want their films to make them a good amount of profit, and this is the first time they have been in this sort of hot water.
Since Iron Man kicked off the MCU in 2008, every year that Marvel Studios released a film, at least one comfortably broke even, usually by a wide margin. Even during weaker years like 2021 (Eternals, Black Widow, Shang-Chi), at least one title turned a theatrical profit.
The only “gap year” was 2020, when no MCU films were released at all due to COVID-19 delays, but that doesn’t count as a failure to break even, it was just a shutdown year.