Madame Web Breaks Bleak Record Set by Fantastic Four 2015

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. 

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.” 

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 decadewill 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.