When you write about box office results every weekend as I do, you can't help but notice certain patterns, and one of the most impactful in recent years has been front-loaded performances by movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The blockbusters continue to do well when they debut in theaters, with excitement for the canon still very much a thing, but the principal issue has been audience retention. Significant weekend-to-weekend drops are not a problem that we see with every MCU title (Jake Schreier's Thunderbolts* dipped only a modest 55 percent earlier this summer), but we have a new one to discuss today.
Riding on a wave of mostly positive pre-release responses and years of waiting for the popular main characters to return to the big screen, Matt Shakman's The Fantastic Four: First Steps had a notable start to its theatrical run (the fourth biggest domestic opening weekend of 2025 so far), but crowds thinned out for its second Friday-to-Sunday. It's not the most egregious example of this second weekend phenomenon for the MCU, and the film still managed to hold its top spot in the rankings, but it's hard not to see the results as disappointing. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.
TITLE | WEEKEND GROSS | DOMESTIC GROSS | LW | THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1. The Fantastic Four: First Steps | $40,000,000 | $198,427,635 | 1 | 4,125 |
2. The Bad Guys 2* | $22,200,000 | $22,200,000 | N/A | 3,852 |
3. The Naked Gun* | $17,000,000 | $17,000,000 | N/A | 3,344 |
4. Superman | $13,855,000 | $316,211,000 | 2 | 3,537 |
5. Jurassic World Rebirth | $8,700,000 | $317,606,000 | 3 | 3,240 |
6. Together* | $6,802,000 | $10,858,502 | N/A | 2,302 |
7. F1 | $4,100,000 | $173,291,000 | 4 | 2,024 |
8. I Know What You Did Last Summer | $2,650,000 | $29,352,000 | 6 | 2,303 |
9. Smurfs | $1,770,000 | $28,502,000 | 5 | 2,295 |
10. How To Train Your Dragon | $1,350,000 | $260,409,000 | 7 | 1,459 |
The Fantastic Four: First Steps Suffers A Tough Weekend-To-Weekend Drop Following Its Debut
In late 2023, the ticket sales in the second weekend for Nia DaCosta's The Marvels dipped a shocking 78 percent. Earlier that same year, Peyton Reed's Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania experienced a rough 70 percent fall. And respectively released in 2022 and early 2025, both Taika Waititi's Thor: Love And Thunder and Julius Onah's Captain America: Brave New World saw drops of 68 percent.
Those are the worst examples of weekend-to-weekend collapses by MCU titles in the post-Avengers: Endgame era, and Fantastic Four: First Steps didn't perform THAT badly in the last three days... but the results are definitely disappointing.
When it comes to weekend-to-weekend changes, the reasonable goal is to have a number that starts with a "5," and that's a test that the newest Marvel movie was unable to pass. According to The Numbers, Fantastic Four: First Steps only made an estimated $40 million since Friday, which calculates to a 66 percent change from the $117.6 million it made when it premiered.
What makes this a particularly surprising result is the buzz that the retrofuturistic-designed blockbuster has managed to garner since it first started screening. While I can't say that I was personally part of the crowd singing its praises (you can read my Fantastic Four: First Steps CinemaBlend review for my explanation why), I am in the minority when it comes to the community of professional film critics, and CinemaScore surveys returned a very healthy "A-" grade. That is typically a formula for positive word of mouth, which often results in strong second weekend numbers... but we didn't see that happen here.
Needless to say, this is troubling. It's logical that a movie getting a lot of negative responses (from critics and/or audiences) would see its ticket sales steeply decline, which was the case with all of the films mentioned in the first paragraph of this section... but these results don't have that same kind of logic behind them. It seems that the folks who didn't show up for opening weekend weren't convinced by praise that emanated from its initial box office splash. Right now, the reasoning for that isn't clear.
In terms of its overall performance, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is just a couple million short of crossing the $200 million milestone (it sits at $198.4 million) – which is still good enough for it to rank as the eighth biggest movie of 2025 in the United States and Canada. Notably, it has already outgrossed Thunderbolts*, which finished its big screen run in the region making $190.3 million, and it will soon surpass the earnings of Captain America: Brave New World, which made $200.5 million before it left cinemas.
The movie is performing a bit slower overseas, as it has made $170.3 million so far from foreign markets. The equates to a worldwide total of $368.7 million, which means that it still sits right behind Captain America 4 ($413.6 million) and the movie also known as New Avengers ($382.4 million). When it surpasses the ticket sales of both, it will enter the Top 10 for 2025.
The Bad Guys 2 And The Naked Gun Have Modest Starts To Kick Off The August Box Office
It can't really be said that competition was one of the major factors resulting in lower-than-expected second weekend numbers for Fantastic Four: First Steps, as this past Friday didn't see any Jurassic World Rebirth or Superman-level titles arrive on the big screen and steal attention – as reflected in the fact that the Marvel movie was able to hold on to its title as "The Biggest Movie In America." That being said, Pierre Perifel's The Bad Guys 2 and Akiva Schaffer's The Naked Gun still managed to have what can be deemed solid performances while taking home silver and bronze medals.
The original Bad Guys, also directed by Pierre Perifel, was released in April 2022 and made $24 million in its opening weekend. The sequel, which reportedly had a $10 million increase in its production budget ($80 million vs. $70 million), essentially mirrored its performance and made $22.2 million over the last three days. When considering the fact that its predecessor went on to make $250.8 million worldwide by the end of its time being listed on marquees, that's a result that shouldn't make anyone unhappy, and it has a nice chance of growing some legs through what are typically lackluster weeks in August.
It will additionally be interesting to follow the potential long-term success of The Naked Gun starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. The movie has made a mission out of trying to save the future of big screen comedies, and it successfully hit the higher end of box office estimates published by Variety at the end of last week. The film has gotten an overwhelmingly positive response from critics (CinemaBlend's Mike Reyes gave it a four-star review) and audiences are laughing, as evidenced by the "A-" CinemaScore. Will it successfully generate the positive word-of-mouth that Fantastic Four couldn't?
That will surely be one of the things I'll be looking at next Sunday when analyzing the box office results – along with the splashes made by the arrival of Zach Cregger's much-hyped horror film Weapons and Nisha Ganatra's Freakier Friday. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend to see the results, and for a look at everything on the way to theaters in the coming months, check out our 2025 Movie Release Calendar.
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