UPDATE: Looking like a 70% drop for F4 after a decent Saturday. Projected for $39M weekend.
EARLIER: Damn. The numbers are even worse than I had previously reported. The positive reviews aren’t helping. This film is the definition of having been front loaded.
Marvel’s “Fantastic Four: First Steps” is crashing hard in its second weekend. The film grossed just $11M on Friday, pointing to a steep 80% drop from its opening weekend—an alarmingly sharp fall, even by recent Marvel standards.
Weekend projections have been slashed dramatically. What was once expected to be a $45–$52M sophomore frame now looks likely to land somewhere in the mid-$30M range. Prior to the weekend, Fantastic Four’s ten-day domestic total was at around $170 million—far short of the $200M+ Marvel reportedly spent on production alone.
The budget for ‘Fantastic Four’ isn’t quite clear. The trades originally reported it cost $200M, but then you had Variety saying it was higher than that. We might never know, but it does look as though the film might not hit $500M by the end of its run.