Why The Opening Weekend For Fantastic Four Doesn't (Necessarily) Spell Doom
, a C- CinemaScore with moviegoers and an opening weekend that couldn't crack $30 million or [...]
So the verdict is in: nobody likes Fantastic Four very much, and moviegoers didn't turn out for it in significant numbers.
With only 9% of its reviews rating "fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes (a better-but-still-dismal 25% from audiences), a C- CinemaScore with moviegoers and an opening weekend that couldn't crack $30 million or take the #1 spot at the box office, things seem bleak for Marvel's First Family.
For those cheerleading the film's failure in the hopes the rights will revert to Marvel if Fox doesn't make a sequel, though, it's likely important to remember that a lot rests on whether the studio perceives this as a failure of the franchise, or a failure of the film. If they believe the franchise itself still has value, it may be difficult to convince them to part with it.
Consider the case of Pacific Rim, which cost $190 million to make, compared to Fantastic Four's reported $122M. That film opened with just $34 million -- about 19% of its production cost -- at the domestic box office, actually a smaller percentage than FF's 21%. That film eventually had a sequel greenlit, and is considered a potential franchise-starter, with an animated series also being discussed.
The circumstances surrounding that decision were somewhat exceptional, though; Legendary Pictures doesn't have a lot of native properties and had just severed ties with Warner Bros. and their hugely profitable Batman and Superman films, which Legendary had produced for years. It was also a movie that received glowing, almost ecstatic reviews in many quarters and had long legs and great word-of-mouth. Even though it lost a boatload of money domestically, it did so without the kind of precipitous second-week drop that's likely to afflict FF next week.
Still, Fantastic Four has an artificial floor; with a recognizable property and a built-in fan base, the odds of building on this film's weak box office -- especially if word-of-mouth and reviews aren't so brutal in a theoretical second time around -- are very good. The idea of tying the team in with the successful X-Men franchise in order to boost its reputation probably isn't totally out of the question, either, if Fox is really looking for means and opportunity to hang onto the license.
Remember, too, that the earlier Fantastic Four films were not the box office embarrassments that this one is. 2005's Fantastic Four turned a profit at a time when superhero movies weren't the box office gold they've been in the time since. Even Rise of the Silver Surfer made a profit, with that franchise likely being killed as much by a lack of enthusiasm for the idea of a follow-up than any hard math.
But what they also lacked was any sense of urgency about losing the rights. A 2015 reboot, after all, was always a possibility and no sequel had yet been promised. A Fantastic Four sequel was already announced for 2017, although it's been suggested that doing so was at least in part a maneuver to soft pedal the studio's lack of faith in this weekend's movie.
It's also likely on the minds of Fox executives that if they wait another five-plus years to reboot again, both Marvel and DC's cinematic universes will be long-since-established and some superhero fatigue will likely be settling into the box office, making a new franchise much harder to launch than one already tied to successful previous installments.
Yet another potential variable is the hoped-for X-Men TV series, which reportedly has hit some Marvel-related snags. Some fans and critics have proposed that Fox could overcome those hurdles by trading the Fantastic Four rights to own Marvel's merry mutants free and clear, but it's not clear that anyone has seriously considered this possibility...or that Marvel would be interested, even if it were proposed. After all, they already have popular properties like The Hulk and Black Widow who aren't getting movies of their own, and have been quoted in the past that saying characters with somewhat more complicated rights situations (like Hulk and Namor) just aren't being pursued right now because the studio is preoccupied with its many, many promising upcoming releases featuring characters they don't have to jump through hoops to use.
Last, and probably most important, is the widely-circulated notion that Fox had a vote of no confidence in Trank very early on and effectively hijacked the movie from him at some point. This suggests that they could blame him for the movie's failure and convince themselves that with the right talent behind the lens (and probably more aggressive studio oversight in the early going), they could have something to work with.
Look, the point here is, nobody knows what happens next. There are some educated guesses to be made, but it's unlikely even Fox knows what their next move is, and it appears they've known for some time that this movie was a poor investment for them. There are a ton of variables to consider, though, and those on Twitter shouting "Welcome back to the Marvel Universe, Reed and company!" would probably do well to reconsider how early those chickens are counted.
