Fantastic Four opens weakly in 2nd place with $26.2 million and Mission: Impossible wins the weekend
20th Century Fox‘s Fantastic Four, directed by Josh Trank (Chronicle) with the cast of Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell, opened for previews Thursday night, and while it was #1 on Friday with $11.3 million, it ended up falling behind Paramount Pictures’ Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation for the weekend, according to Sunday estimates.
After making $2.7 million in Thursday previews, it opened officially on Friday in 3,995 theaters (the widest release for any movie in theaters right now) and after its $11.3 million Friday, it dropped on Saturday with $8.5 million and Fox is projecting it to make $6.4 million on Sunday, adding up to an estimated $26.2 million for the weekend. That’s $6,658 per theater, which is fairly awful for such a high-profile wide summer release, especially since it didn’t have a ton of direct competition other than Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man.
Then again, reviews were horrendous and the film’s “C-” CinemaScore does not bode well for Fantastic Four to have any sort of legs and it may not even gross $100 million domestically, which means it’s relying entirely on international markets to make back its production budget, presumably from the places where they can’t read all those bad reviews on the internet. (One assumes that this is not a good sign for the film’s sequel that was dated for June 9, 2017 even before the movie’s release.)
Meanwhile, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation was in second place on Friday with $8.2 million, but its strong word-of-mouth and reviews helped push it up to an estimated $29.4 million, winning its second weekend at the box office with a respectable 47% drop. It has grossed $108.6 million so far, although it has a lot stronger competition this coming weekend with Guy Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which is also adapted from a popular spy TV show. $4.3 million of that weekend total was grossed on 369 domestic IMAX screens with another $3.5 million internationally for a global IMAX total of just under $25 million to date.
Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man (Disney) dropped to fifth place with $7.8 million (down 39%) as it brought its domestic gross to $147.4 million with another $9.2 million grossed overseas, to bring its global total to $326.3 million.
Opening on Tuesday in just under 900 theaters, FUNimation’s release of the Anime Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F‘ has grossed $5.6 million domestically, entering the Top 10 for Anime films released in North America after less than a week in theaters as well as putting it just behind Lionsgate’s animated release Shaun the Sheep Movie despite playing in half as many theaters. Although the release was initially for one week only, the film’s success has gotten them more theaters for earlier in the week.
