Is it super? Yes. Is it fantastic? Well…
Our number one movie, of course, is The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which took its first steps to the tune of an estimated $118 million. Make no mistake, that’s still very, very good. But as with Superman a few weeks ago, this is lower than where projections had it. The problem with Fantastic Four is it appears it’s very frontloaded. On “opening day” (Thursday and Friday), numbers were suggesting a premiere of $125 million or more. Ultimately…that didn’t happen.
Again, we could just blame overly bombastic tracking for all of this. Some sources look at early ticket sales and get way too excited way too quickly and then we get people saying Fantastic Four is going to open to a minimum of $135 million. But at the end of the day, First Steps is still coming in softer than anticipated. This is a huge Marvel title for Disney, as it’s instrumental to setting up next year’s mega-blockbuster Avengers: Doomsday.
Still, First Steps is easily the best MCU debut of 2024, leaps and bounds ahead of Brave New World and Thunderbolts*. Superman, however, still has the bragging rights for best comic book opening of the year, so if anyone out there actually cares about the “Marvel vs. DC” debate, well, take the W if you’re Team DC. And speaking of Superman, it is going to surpass Man of Steel as the biggest Superman solo outing stateside (not taking super inflation into account), so those are good optics from a PR standpoint for the DCU going forward.
But–I’m just going to say it–NO ONE BENEFITED FROM THESE TWO MOVIES OPENING TWO WEEKS APART FROM EACH OTHER! Pardon the fantastic usage of all caps, but from a financial standpoint, it makes no sense to open two films going for the exact same target audience so close together. We saw this happen in 2017 when DC got cute and decided to release Justice League just two weekends after Thor: Ragnarök, which obviously didn’t work out for them. You can blame mediocre reviews all you like, but the bottom line is League would’ve opened leagues better if it had been given more breathing room from Thor and Hulk’s buddy comedy. Both Superman and Fantastic Four were incredibly important tentpoles for their studios, so this strategy is just flat-out sloppy. Sometimes, it’s okay to be the one to blink.
Anyway, the top ten, via The Numbers
