The Fantastic Four: First Steps continues Marvel’s return to form with critics, but also maintains a disappointing box office trend. The movie, which brought Marvel’s First Family into the MCU, has been a solid box office performer, albeit not a fantastic one. Its opening weekend surpassed expectations, hitting a global total of $216.7 million, with $117m of that coming domestically. Though just behind Superman ($220m), that marked the biggest worldwide debut for an MCU movie in 2025, beating Captain America: Brave New World ($192.4m) and Thunderbolts* ($160.1m).
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However, Fantastic Four suffered a major drop in its second weekend, with a 66% decline at the domestic box office. The overall picture is not nearly as disastrous as that sounds, with the movie at a global total of $367m at the time of writing, and it’s comfortably on track to gross over $400m when its theatrical run ends. That’d be a big improvement on Thunderbolts*‘ $382m total, and it may overtake Brave New World‘s $415m as well. With a reported production budget of $200m, it’d be enough to make the movie a success and, hopefully, earn a sequel, but it also shows how things have changed for the MCU.
Fantastic Four: First Steps’ Box Office May Be The MCU’s New Normal
The MCU took a little while to become a true box office juggernaut. Iron Man kicked things off in style with a global total of $585m, but of the other Phase 1 solo movies, only its sequel, Iron Man 2, reached the $500m milestone. The Incredible Hulk ($264m), Thor ($449m), and Captain America: The First Avenger ($370m) were all more modest box office performers, even if the latter two were still unquestionably successful. After The Avengers became the first MCU movie to hit $1 billion in 2012, the franchise didn’t look back, and not a single Phase 2-3 movie made less than $500m.
The MCU’s box office peak arrived with Phase 3. Of the 11 movies that made up this era, six grossed over $1bn, with two of those (Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame) making over $2bn. This also included a run, from Black Panther through to Spider-Man: Far From Home, where five out of six MCU movies crossed the billion-dollar threshold. That was unquestionably a different time for Marvel, and for theaters in general, but it also means there’s a slightly unfair way of viewing things across the subsequent phases.
Hitting the $1bn mark is seen as the norm, or an expectation, for a Marvel movie, but that shouldn’t be the case. It’s an increasingly tough barrier for any movie to break through – Jurassic World Rebirth looks like being the first Jurassic World movie not to achieve it – and only two MCU movies have done so this decade (Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine). It’s a world where we might need to be looking at, say, $800 million as the new $1bn in terms of the kind of feat it is. And with that, a movie making over $400m also looks a lot better.
That may now be the barrier for what represents a pretty good benchmark MCU performance, especially for a non-sequel like Thunderbolts* or First Steps. The days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe branding alone being enough to carry a movie to $600-700m and above are over, and while that may be a harsh reality to accept, it’s a necessary one to adjust to for how these movies are viewed and talked about. Fantastic Four is a well-reviewed MCU movie, with strong audience reception too, based on well-known characters (if not ones who have been in a hugely successful movie), and a star name in Pedro Pascal.
Not everything was in its favor – July was a packed month, including Superman; the previous Fantastic Four movies weren’t good – but there was enough to suggest it should be a success. And it looks like being one, even if it’s smaller than what the typical idea of an MCU box office hit is. If First Steps ends at $450m, or somewhere in that broad region, that’s likely what the new normal is for a new non-sequel MCU movie with good reviews.
Why The MCU Is No Longer The Dominant Box Office Force
When it comes to the MCU’s box office performance, perhaps the most talked about factor is “superhero fatigue” and oversaturation of the market. The latter part of that undoubtedly happened, something Marvel is aware of – there’s a reason it is scaling back its output, both in theaters and even more so on Disney+. The MCU has been hurt by lower quality, and not just from Marvel Studios movies. General audiences don’t always know the difference between MCU and something like Sony’s Marvel movies, and through both, the former’s reputation has declined. Indeed, the MCU’s five lowest-rated films on Rotten Tomatoes have all been from the 2020s:
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – 46%
- Eternals – 46%
- Captain America: Brave New World – 47%
- The Marvels – 62%
- Thor: Love & Thunder – 63%
Combine that downturn in critical reception with the sheer amount of content available, and a feeling that you need to watch everything to understand what’s going on, and it becomes easy to see why fewer people may bother, or at least why they might be inclined to wait for a Disney+ release instead. That also speaks to a larger box office malaise that’s not Marvel’s fault (though the number of franchise sequels has had an impact on the number of original movies that get made and, thus, seen), going back to the Covid-19 pandemic. That pretty much halted the box office in its tracks, and after years of delays, strikes, and more, things still haven’t recovered, as the chart below from Statista highlights.
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Also important for the MCU, in particular, is the Chinese box office. This became an area studio tentpoles increasingly relied on in the late 2010s but, as fewer Hollywood movies have been imported there and its audience has instead turned to Chinese films, that has rapidly shrunk. The Fantastic Four: First Steps has only grossed $5m in China, and even Deadpool & Wolverine, a much bigger success, “only” made $59m. Compare that to the non-sequels of Phase 3:
- Doctor Strange – China: $109m, Total: $677m
- Spider-Man: Homecoming – China: $116m, Total: $880m
- Black Panther – China: $105m, Total: $1.3bn
- Captain Marvel – China: $154m, Total: $1.1bn
It’ll Be A While Before We Know The State Of The MCU’s Box Office After Fantastic Four
There’s no one cause for the MCU’s box office downturn, and that also means there’s no one easy fix. The focus, of course, should be on making high-quality movies, and fewer films in general – a development that is already well-represented by Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four. But it’s also going to be quite a while before we can even assess how things might shake out for the MCU outside of its biggest event movies, because that’s all it has on its slate right now.
2026 will bring Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday, and 2027 will see the release of Avengers: Secret Wars. Marvel has some other dates staked out, but no movies filling them as yet. Those three releases should all comfortably clear the $1 billion barrier, because of what they are – and if they don’t, it speaks to an even bigger problem. But until we get one of the other movies being developed, such as Blade (lol) or Shang-Chi 2 (please, Marvel), it’ll be difficult to assess if business picks up for these kinds of movies after The Fantastic Four.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is currently playing exclusively in theaters. Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be released on July 31, 2026. Avengers: Doomsday releases December 18, 2026, followed by Avengers: Secret Wars on December 17, 2027.
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