Fox withheld Trank’s Fantastic Four from reviewers, which is always a bad sign, and in spite of a major ad campaign the film’s opening turned out to be about half of what was expected. Compared with its two lackluster Fox predecessors, the 2005 Fantastic Four ($56 million) and the 2007 sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ($58.1 million), the reboot’s opening is a disaster—heck even Blade 2 opened with $32.5 million (and that’s in 2002 dollars), the ill-starred Green Hornet film managed $33.5 million in 2011, and the much-maligned Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern opened north of $53 million.
There was more bad buzz emanating from the set of the FF reboot than from a whole nest of hornets (green or otherwise), and it reached a sort of an anti-climax on Thursday when Trank took to social media (in a tweet that has since been rescinded) to complain that “his” version of the film was much better than the studio’s. Some rumors have Fox planning to incorporate the FF into its X-Men films. Instead, after failing three times to get the Fantastic Four right, the studio should mercifully let its rights to the quartet lapse, lest any new Fox version of the FF taint the studio’s semi-successful X-Men franchise in some sort of a half-baked team-up.
Is there any hope for the box office future of the Fantastic Four reboot? Not on the domestic front; word of mouth won’t help as the new Fantastic Four earned a wretched “C-“ CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences (CinemaScores are notoriously “high”--Pixels got a “B”). With a production cost of $120 million, the new FF film looks like a problem for Fox unless it takes off overseas, and the early returns from outside North America are not positive. With the exception of Mexico, the new FF film isn’t doing well overseas either, as it earned just $34.1 million from 43 territories.
The third spot went to the psychological thriller The Gift, which was written and directed by Joel Edgerton and produced by Blumhouse for just $5 million. Unlike many of Blumhouse’s horror movie entries, The Gift actually gained traffic from Friday to Saturday night as the film earned an estimated $12 million for the weekend.
The remake of National Lampoon’s Vacation slipped just 38% in its sophomore frame, but due to its weak opening, it only earned $9.1 million, as it brought its domestic total to $37.3 million.
Marvel Studio’s Ant-Man, which is now in its fourth weekend, added $7.8 million to bring its domestic total to $147.4 million, which represents just 45.2% of the movie’s global total of $326.3 million.
Universal’s Minions, now in its fifth weekend, earned $7.4 million as it crossed the $300 million mark domestically. Minions still trails Pixar’s Inside Out by $32 million for the “top animated summer box office film of 2015,” and may not catch it, though Inside Out will never catch Minions' worldwide total, which is currently at $912.6 million.
The Meryl Streep rock musical dramedy Ricki and the Flash debuted in seventh place with an estimated $7 million from 1,603 theaters. Females over 25 made up 70% of the audience for the $18 million production, which expands to 2,000 theaters next week.
The Amy Schumer-starring Trainwreck dropped 34.4% in its fourth weekend as it added $6.3 million to bring its domestic total to $91.1 million. It will make it over the $100 million mark, the question is, how far?
Sony’s Pixel’s continued its dismal run as it slipped to #9 in its third weekend, earning $5.4 million, which was just ahead of Southpaw’s $4.8 million.
Aardman Animation’s stop-motion animated Shaun the Sheep Movie also flopped as it earned just $4 million from 2,320 theaters for a poor $1,724 average. It looks like this extremely well-reviewed film (“99% Fresh” rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with 107 positive reviews versus 1 negative) will have to make its mark on video.
Be sure to check back here next weekend when the big-budget adaptation of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. opens along with the rap-history saga Straight Outta Compton.