Ok, ok, ok, so Marvel Studios/Disney‘s The Fantastic Four: First Steps is coming in lighter at $118M after a -42% slide on Saturday against Friday/previews for what was $33.2M. As we said yesterday, cynics, go pound sand. $100M-plus opening for the industry? What major studio wouldn’t want that? Also, for a superhero movie to continue to do $100M+ in its 3-day start, va bene for capes.
Worldwide debut is $218M, which is $2M shy of Superman‘s initial global pounce.
Still, that’s a steep Friday/previews to Saturday decline, which indicates the movie was front-loaded. Nobody was spotting that yesterday, the lowest was a $120M debut. And families always go to the movies on Saturday. Fantastic Four‘s fall is sharper than Superman (-33%), Thunderbolts* (-22%), Deadpool & Wolverine (-36%), and Captain America: Brave New World (-32%).
What happened?
Essentially, fewer families went to see Marvel’s first family than DC Studios’ Superman. Go figure. According to EntTelligence, while metro centers with populations over 1M overperformed on Fantastic Four: First Steps, rural and suburban areas (where families live) under performed on average -13%. Also, kids under 13 only repped 8% of the population. It just is what it is. It doesn’t mean Fantastic Four is broken, it’s just a crappy thing when the industry over projects on a big movie during its opening weekend, and then it comes in lower by Sunday and Monday. Disney figures that Fantastic Four will ease -16% today with $27.8M.
The norm attendance for families to a PG-13 superhero movie is 21% per EntTelligence. Fantastic Four came in at 17%.
I’m telling you again for the Nth time: whenever tracking or studio’s distribution departments project on $100M+ openings, there’s always a rounding an error. It’s never perfect. One box office insider said “On Friday, I had Fantastic Four doing $135M.”
Also, there’s a lot of PG-13 family entertainment in the market this weekend with the third weekend of Superman doing $24.8M, and Universal’s Jurassic World Rebirth at $13M in its fourth sesh.
Also good to note that older audiences embraced Fantastic Four more (maybe it’s the period of it all that kept some families away) with Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak showing that the best definite recommends came from 35-44 at 80%, 45-54 at 72% and over 55 at 78% versus 18-24 at 69% and 25-34 at 69%.
Imax and PLFs were huge at 40%, with Imax alone contributing close to 14% of the weekend or $16M at 418 hubs. That’s the second-highest ever domestic market share for an MCU film and eighth consecutive +10% domestic indexing opening for Imax. 3D repped 13%.
Comscore reports that the YTD box office has crossed $5.2 billion, +13% from the Jan. 1-July 27 frame of last year. Summer is currently +10% of summer 2024 with $2.86 billion. That said, summer is -15% behind 2019’s at the same point in time (after the first Friday start in May); that figure being $3.3 billion.
Sunday numbers:
1. Fantastic Four (Dis) 4,125 theaters, Fri $57M, Sat $33.2M Sun $27.8M, 3-day $118M/Wk 1
2. Superman (WB) 3,930 (-345) theaters, Fri $7.1M (-57%) Sat $9.8M Sun $7.9M, 3-day $24.8M (-57%), Total $289.5M/Wk 3
3. Jurassic World Rebirth (Uni) 3,550 (-304) theaters, Fri $3.7M (-44%) Sat $5.2M Sun $4M 3-day $13M (-45%), Total $301.5M/Wk 4
4. F1 (WB) 2,615 (-479) theaters, Fri $1.8M (-36%) Sat $2.5M Sun $1.8M 3-day $6.2M (-37%), Total $165.6M/Wk 5
5. Smurfs (Par) 3,504 theaters, Fri $1.72M (-57%) Sat $2M Sun $1.6M 3-day $5.4M (-51%), Total $22.7M/Wk 2
6. I Know What You Did Last Summer (Sony) Fri $1.62M (-72%) Sat $2M Sun $1.49M 3-day $5.1M (-60%), Total $23.5M/Wk 2
7. How to Train Your Dragon (Uni) 2,346 (-502) theaters, Fri $850K (-48%) Sat $1.1M Sun $840K 3-day $2.8M (-48%), Total $257M/Wk 7
8. Eddington (A24) 2065 (-46) theaters, Fri $478K (-73%) Sat $641K Sun $545K 3-day $1.66M (-62%), Total $8.1M/Wk 2
A hard fall here for the Ari Aster directed socio-comedy-western-action movie as we all knew it would be. This is steeper than his genre movies, Hereditary (-50%) and Midsommar (-49%) and even sharper than the second weekend wide release (technically third weekend) of Wes Anderson’s Phoenician Scheme (-49%). It remains questionable whether this net $25M production can make it to $13M. Aster’s Beau Is Afraid shrieked its final domestic take at $8.1M.
9. Saiyaara (YRF) 210 (-85) theaters, $390K (+143%), Sat $506K Sun $504K 3-day $1.4M (+131%), Total $3.3M/Week 2
10. Oh Hi! (SPC) 866 theaters, Fri $736K Sat $218K Sun $175K , 3-day $1.1M/Wk 1
Alright results in NYC, LA, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, DC and Denver.