Its weekend total came in at an estimated $29.4 million. Trank reportedly exhibited weird behavior on set that was so extreme it cost him his gig directing a “Star Wars” spinoff. (He later deleted the tweet.).
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“This turned into a nightmare for Fox”, said Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations.
When a portal to earth opens up and tries to swallow everything in a black hole of destruction, the team are finally able to put things in order via a nicely choreographed fight sequence that features each individuals powers at their finest, in scenes that will likely please comic book fans. Maybe there’s just no good way to make a Fantastic Four movie.
The 20th Century Fox Fox reboot has performed so poorly compared to tracking guestimations and conventional wisdom that it may well be a case where everything I have always claimed doesn’t matter on opening weekend actually mattered this weekend. While this idea is really cool and based in actual science, it isn’t easy for movie audiences to really understand.
“I might guess the mixture of crucial response coupled with social media response conspired to suppress our opening”, Aronson stated.
He was not willing to write off the “Fantastic Four” series yet, but stressed that the studio would be engaged in a rigorous postmortem about the film s failure. For, in a nutshell, this reboot is a little weak as a stand-alone movie, but displays enough promise – both story and characterwise – for any future films should this have the chance to flourish in a new franchise. A Joe Dante/Explorers-esque set up introduces us to the pre-teen incarnations of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, as the former takes his first steps towards creating an inter-dimensional machine in his parent’s basement (which amusingly results in him blacking out most of New Jersey).
Twentieth Century Fox’s “Unbelievable 4” failed to attract younger moviegoers and fell in need of its opening weekend expectations, debuting in second place behind holdover “Mission: Unimaginable – Rogue Nation“. It will attempt to become the third film in the franchise to pass the $200 million mark by the end of its run. Are we still going to get a “Fantastic Four” sequel in 2017? Some estimates had it at $40-45 million, so this one hurts even more. The intimate, intelligent focus of the film’s first half makes one lament the fact that such a vision couldn’t be sustained. “While we’re disappointed, we remain committed to these characters and we have a lot to look forward to in our Marvel universe“.
So what does it take to make an AWESOME Fantastic Four movie?
But the most telling line is uttered by Reed, who expresses his dismay upon discovering that soulless bureaucrats have somehow rebuilt his beloved teleportation device while he was away: “You made it ugly”, he kvetches, in a sentiment that will no doubt be shared by those of us who wonder why it’s so darn hard to tell this story. There hasn’t been a big-scale superhero comic book movie of this nature to open under $35 million since Sony’s The Green Hornet in 2011, and the next lowest of even remotely this scale is the $22m debut in 2012 of Sony’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. The movie took in a $11 million on Friday night.
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Families bicker and squabble but they always come together when it counts the most. Made for just $5 million, it’s a strong start for the new STX Productions, which is planning a slate of mid-level budget films. The raunchy comedy written by and starring Amy Schumer could be headed for $15 million.
