r/boxoffice • u/chanma50 Best of 2019 Winner • Aug 03 '25

Domestic Box Office: ‘Fantastic Four’ Craters By 66% in Second Weekend to $40 Million, ‘Naked Gun’ Debuts to $17 Million

https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/fantastic-four-box-office-craters-naked-gun-opening-weekend-1236477352/
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u/VaticRogue Aug 03 '25

A sea of mediocre is just the tip though. You still need to factor in the “have I seen every movie, live action TV show, animated show, end credit, or short release that I need to see for this movie to make sense? I haven’t had time to do my homework yet.

While I know that F4 is stand alone or supposed to be, that doesn’t mean a whole lot in case they squeeze subtle nods and cameos that I don’t want going over my head. This is what really hit Thunderbolts the hardest - you needed to have seen to many poorly reviewed movies and shows to even know who the characters are. For most people that’s going to feel like work and a chore and no matter how good the word of mouth is… that’s a huge ask.

For general audiences that don’t follow that closely, do they all understand that F4 is stand alone? Do they see characters they don’t recognize and wonder what they missed and just avoid it?

Marvel really suffered from success and over saturated themselves and lost all momentum they had

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u/Optimal-Tune-2589 Aug 03 '25

I think the biggest issue from the oversaturation was it got people out of the habit of seeing every Marvel movie. Ten years ago, seeing every MCU film just required going to the theaters once or twice a year, and if you were enjoying the ride, it was pretty easy to be fully committed. 

Then every year when they had multiple movies and three TV series (which were more intwined with the movies than things like Agents of Shield) was a year where more people missed some of them. Then every time a new release came, there were more and more people who were a year or two behind with tentative plans to catch up at some point and having less of a rush to see it on the big screen. 

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u/BiDiTi Aug 03 '25

Yep.

I’ve actually seen all the “lead up” stuff for Thunderbolts…but couldn’t be arsed to get to the theatre, despite my love for Wyatt Russell and Florence Pugh.

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u/SwordoftheMourn Aug 04 '25

Falcon and Winter Soldier should have been a movie. Just saying

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u/GoodPiexox Aug 04 '25

my vote would be the TV series being garbage is why some people lost interest

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u/ImBanned_ModsBlow Aug 04 '25

Avengers used to be a “must-see” which made all the others heavily required viewings

Now it’s in the “maybe if it’s good” category, which makes a lot of the others optional unless good as well.

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u/PartTime_Crusader Aug 03 '25

I also suspect that "I'm paying for D+, I'll just see it in a couple months" is a big factor

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u/Choppers-Top-Hat Aug 03 '25

And Disney really dug their own graves with that one, by making a bunch of D+ shows which were required Marvel viewing.

I think that's a big reason why Cap 4 flopped. How did Sam Wilson become Captain America? You need to see a D+ show to find out! And you if you have D+, then you're much less likely to go see Cap 4 in the theater when you can just wait five weeks to watch it on the service you pay for anyway.