Madame Web Breaks Bleak Record Set by Fantastic Four 2015

It's clobberin' time: Sony's Madame Web breaks a record set by Fox's Fant4stic.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Madame Web's box office opening was anything but Fant4stic. Sony's Spider-Man spinoff starring Dakota Johnson as the clairvoyant Cassandra Webb saw a dismal $25.8 million over the six-day holiday stretch of Valentine's Day and Presidents Day — the worst for any Sony-made Marvel movie — opening at #2 behind Paramount's Bob Marley biopic One Love. That makes Madame Web the first Marvel-based movie since Fox's Fantastic Four reboot to fail to open at No. 1. The Josh Trank-directed Fant4stic, which opened with $26.2 million in August 2015, was similarly clobbered by audiences and critics alike: it received a 9% on Rotten Tomatoes and a C- CinemaScore, still the worst-ever for a studio superhero movie.

Fant4stic— starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell as the Fantastic Four — went on to gross just $167.9 million at the global box office after opening behind the reigning No. 1 Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation in its second weekend. With a C+ CinemaScore from audiences and a 13% "rotten" rating from scathing critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, Madame Web tied Jared Leto's vampire misfire Morbius and 2011's Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance for Sony's worst-received movie based on a Marvel character. 

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Other comic book movies to open in the C range include 1997's Batman & Robin (C+), 1997's Spawn (C+), 1999's Mystery Men (C+), 1987's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (C), and 2019's Hellboy reboot (C).

Bob Marley: One Love earned a record-breaking $14 million on Feb. 14, Valentine's Day, more than doubling the $6.05 million of Madame Web on date night. Starring Kingsley Ben-Adir as the iconic reggae musician, One Love jammed to an A with audiences on CinemaScore despite a 43% approval from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Meanwhile, Madame Web reviews skewered Sony's "knock-off" Marvel movie, calling it everything from a dollar-bin "superhero B-movie" to "Cats: The Movie of superhero movies." 

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After acquiring 20th Century Fox in 2019, Disney is rebooting The Fantastic Four with Kevin Feige producing for Marvel Studios. It was announced this week that the first Fantastic 4 movie in a decade will star Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Susan Storm-Richards/the Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/Thing. Marvel's The Fantastic Four is scheduled to open July 25, 2025.

Sony's Madame Web — starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, and Adam Scott — is now playing in theaters.

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