In a staggering turn of events in the current showdown that is Marvel and DC, box offices of Fantastic Four: First Steps and Superman, Marvel suffers a blow as Fantastic Four four dropped 66% its second week. That’s an 11% larger drop than the original anticipated 55% as a result bringing in only $40 million more officially putting it below the first two weeks of Superman’s run by comparison. For context Marvel’s 2022 Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania saw a massive 70% drop from its opening week’s 106.1 million to 31.96 million making it a box office bomb while The Marvels, the biggest of Marvel’s drops and one of the most infoumus, saw 46.1 million in it’s opening week before barely scrapping by 10.1 million with a 78% drop making it the 35th steepest drop in Domestic Box Office history on record according to comicbook.com.
To add salt on the wound Fantastic Four did not see a significant drop in number of theaters played meaning the bad rap of the previous string of flops from the past couple of years from Marvel may have dampened Fantastic Four‘s box office performance, despite stellar reviews and word of mouth, even more so than the smaller fallowing for the Four. While both films successfully fought off superhero fatigue with quality stories and visuals, Fantastic Four still isn’t out of the running yet to be the superhero film of the year with a $368 million global tally, it is still catching up to Superman despite the two week head start. This week and it’s fourth week with $13.85 million for this weekend against a domestic total of $316.2 million but a global total of $502 million.
Second place for this week actually went to Universal’s DreamWorks’s The Bad Guys 2, the sequel to the 2022 animated anthropomorphic animal crime comedy The Bad Guys. The Bad Guys 2 performed just as well as its predecessor netting $22.2 million for its opening week compared to the $23 million the first film garnered post-pandemic.
Third went to a legacy sequel, Liam Neeson’s the Naked Gun, which continues the story of the original Leslie Nielsen led Naked Gun trilogy, the fourth film following Frank Drebin Jr. The story follows the son of the late LA detective Frank Debra as he continues the tradition of unhinged comedic crime-fighting alongside co-stars Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser. Naked Gun performed well, despite the notorious bad luck comedies tend to have at the box office, scoring $17 million for its opening weekend likely due to catering to the known audience. As stated earlier in the article, Superman took fourth following behind Naked Gun.
Fifth went to continued summer tent pole, Jurassic World Rebirth with $8.7 million in its 5th week for a nice healthy box office domestic performance of $317.6 million.
Sixth went to a notable newcomer, NEON’s Together, which made headlines for the $17 million acquisition rights deal from the Sundance Festival for the Dave Franco and Alison Brie led film, alongside a still-pending alleged copyright infringement lawsuit dropped earlier this year in May. The festival darling body horror film opened with $6.8 million, aligning with original estimates along with expected lower audience scores due to being a graphic film.
The rest of the top 10 are much more familiar faces with seventh going to F1 the Movie, which brought home $4.1 million in its sixth week. I Know You Did Last Summer hangs on in eighth with $2.65 million in its third week. While ninth went to Paramount bomb, Smurfs, which only saw $1.7 million in its third week, making it a much poorer showing than Pixar’s notorious poor theatrical preforming Elio that dropped earlier this year. After a grueling 7 weeks, Elio managed to pass its reported budget of around $50 million, netting a domestic total of $72.54 million and will likely have to wait till a Disney+ release to finally put itself back in the black, which will be a far better fate than what awaits Smurfs which has seen very little love from both critics and audiences.
Tenth went to How to Train Your Dragon, which hangs on as a straggler with $1.35 million in its eighth week.
A noticeable absence on this week’s top 10 is Sony’s Classics Oh, Hi! which plummeted an even more staggering 85% seeing only $175,000 in it’s second week landing all the way down in 17th.
The weekend numbers are as follows:
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps Weekend $40M Total $198.4M Week 2
- The Bad Guys 2 Weekend $22.2M Total $22.2 Week 1
- The Naked Gun Weekend $17M Total $17M Week 1
- Superman Weekend $13.85M Total $316.2M Week 4
- Jurassic World Rebirth Weekend $8.7M Total $317.6M Week 5
- Together Weekend $6.8M Total $10.85M Week 1
- F1: The Movie Weekend $4.1M Total $173.29M Week 6
- I Know What You Did Last Summer $2.65M Total $29.35M Week 3
- Smurfs Weekend $1.7M Total $28.5M Week 3
- How to Train Your Dragon Weekend $1.35M Total $260.4M Week 8
Notable entries
14. Elio Weekend $365K Total $72.54M Week 7
17. Oh, Hi! Weekend $175K Total $1.78M Week 2
