Fantastic Four Early Projections Are For $45 Million Opening Weekend

Mediocre word of mouth and an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score haven't made much of a dent in Fox's Fantastic Four reboot.

The film, originally projected to make between $40 and $50 million at the U.S. box office this week, now looks like it will earn $45 million.

It's still not an exciting opening for Fantastic Four, though; both the 2005 film and its 2007 sequel generated over $55 million -- and that's before inflation, and almost exclusively non-IMAX money.

Box Office Mojo estimates a smaller-than-expected drop for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in its second week. Previously expected to generate between $20 and $30 million and fall around 50% from its first weekend, the film is now on pace for a $35 million weekend, dropping a very modest 38% week to week. It's possible that Mission: Impossible is being bolstered a bit by the "missing" $5 million from the upper end of the previous Fantastic Four take.

Another possibility is that with a number of films opening this weekend to much stronger reviews than FF, the box office will just float a little higher all around than previously expected.

Shaun the Sheep and Ricki and the Flash are both expected to make between $7 and $11 million, with Ant-Man rounding out the top five with $6.5 million.