‘Fantastic Four’ Craters, ‘Naked Gun’ Debuts to $16 Million

Marvel’s First Family might not save the day after all. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is quickly losing steam in its second weekend, signaling the comic book adventure isn’t connecting at the box office beyond the film’s core demographic of superhero fans.

After a healthy $117.6 million debut, “The Fantastic Four” suffered a hefty 66% drop in its sophomore outing with $40 million from 4,125 theaters. Heading into the weekend, box office analysts anticipated a decline of 55% to 60% from its opening. This painful a fall is surprising because “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” has the benefit of positive reviews and word-of-mouth, as well as a clear runway in terms of competition.

Although those ticket sales were enough to rank as No. 1 on North American charts, “The First Steps” endured one of the steeper second-weekend drops for Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, in the company of February’s “Captain America: Brave New World” (down 68%), 2023’s “Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (down 70%) and 2022’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” (down 67%). So far, “Fantastic Four” has generated $198 million domestically and $368 million globally. Luckily for Marvel, whose output has been wildly inconsistent in post-pandemic times, “The First Steps” is pacing to outgross this year’s prior theatrical disappointments of “Captain America: Brave New World” ($415 million globally) and “Thunderbolts” ($382 million globally).

Three new movies opened nationwide but none were competing for the same audience as “Fantastic Four.” Among new releases, Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s heist comedy “The Bad Guys 2” enjoyed the strongest start with $22.8 million from 3,852 venues. That’s directly even with the first film, which opened to $23 million in 2022 at a time when cinemas were majorly struggling to recover from COVID and studios were barely releasing any movies. The original film…