"Fantastic Four" Box Office Estimates Lower with Poor Word of Mouth

[Sammael]

I think this is the saddest, worst review I've read so far, coming from a fan instead of a critic.

It does hit harder. You can tell he wanted to like it, give it the benefit of the doubt, with a heart so noble and pure the closest image that matches its nature was puss n boots stare upward.



Innocence lost.

He stuck his neck out out of a sense of fair play and looked to Fox to prove the doubters wrong, and they shat in his face. And now he has transformed into this




Not since the transformation of galactus into a glowing dust cloud has a man been so slighted. How many years will it take to damp down that bitterness and ash he tastes at the mention of the fantastic 4?

[Mjolnir]

Man, I wish I could be a fly on the wall with Kevin Feige/Marvel Studios lawyers and Fox's lawyers in regards to their negotiations with Fox in trying to get the X-Men TV rights from Marvel. Because I can only imagine AT LEAST the idea has been floated around about Fox giving up certain whatever characters in exchange for the TV rights to X-Men. But after this weekend, I have to imagine Marvel has a little more leverage in their negotiations with Fox.

Certain characters that Fox has that Marvel would love to have....

The Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom (Obviously)
Silver Surfer
Galactus
Annihilus
The Skrulls (grey area characters that Kevin Feige confirmed in the past Marvel could use too if they wanted)
Super Skrull
The Badoon
The Shiar
and.............. Kang the Conqueror.

Yeah, that shocked a lot of people that Marvel doesn't have the rights to one of the Avengers biggest villains. James Gunn surprised everyone a couple of months ago when asked if Marvel might possibly use Kang next as the big threat for the Guardians or Avengers when they're done telling their Thanos story. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, Marvel doesn't have Kang, Fox does.

There are probably more non-X-Men characters Fox has that I'm not mentioning, but if Fox really wants that TV series for the X-Men characters, it's time they start warming up to the idea to trading characters or join with Marvel Studios in a deal similar to Sony with the Spider-Man rights, but since Fox hasn't made any real money from the F4 like Sony has with Spider-Man over the years, Marvel has more leverage and could grab the film making rights and make all final creative decisions and Fox could keep the distribution rights if they don't want to fully give up anything. Either way, I personally think there will be some changes made within the next few years.

[tamanofu]

image.jpg
Fantastic Four, Mark Waid

[TheTingler]

Well, put it this way. I was really excited for this movie, passed on Ant-Man, defended it from (what at the time felt like) deluded fanboys who didn't like that someone other than Marvel had the Fantastic Four, I love the X-Men movies more than Marvel movies, had the time all planned... and after all this I'm not going to see the movie because of the near-universal panning. I could stand bad writing and dialogue, but a movie that's actually boring and the superheroes don't do anything until the last ten minutes and Sue Storm is sidelined entirely? F*** it.

Sorry Fox, you obviously saw this coming, you knew you made a big mistake with Josh Trank but didn't want to can the movie otherwise you'd lose the rights because like Daredevil you wouldn't have time to make a new movie. Now you've lost the rights, a lot of money, AND much of the goodwill you generated with the X-Men and Deadpool movies. And, for sure, at least two ticket sales from two of your biggest fans. Was it worth it?

[NewMutant]

I gotta say I didn't hate it. I thought it was enjoyable and was nice to have a non generic Marvel pacing. But this was not Fantastic Four - infact the only reason it felt like F4 was because of the title. The characters barely interact or never felt the actual character.

I'm shocked how badly this is being received, but it has had notable bumps in the road the entire way. From costumes, to not following source material, to cancelling 3D versions, etc. The cast tries to defend the film while the direct jumps ship before its even fully released. Fox might be begging to sell them F4 after this. Yikes.

[iamerror]

Yuck. Yeah I was going to give this movie the benefit of the doubt despite all the terrible signs (made the same mistake with Green Lantern). But I think I have to pass on this. Until someone i actually know goes to see it and tells me its worth the money.

[chamber-music]

Just throw them into x men universe and you'll have ff for live at fox.

I would prefer they don't taint their successful X-Men franchise with badly received FF characters.

[Neoxon]

Just throw them into x men universe and you'll have ff for live at fox.

Fox already said that they aren't gonna cross this over with the X-Men, & for good reason. Crossing them over would taint the X-Men franchise at this point.

My guess, Marvel's gonna use this as leverage to get the Fantastic Four film rights back in exchange for Fox getting the live-action TV rights to the X-Men.

In other news, Deadline is saying that this movie is tracking for the high $20 million range for its opening weekend.

[Lasraik]

I didn't think it would be good but from what I'm reading everywhere it's terrible. I didn't have plans to see it either way, but now that the reviews are so bad I almost want to see it.

[MarvelMaster616]

Wow. Just when I thought the news about this movie couldn't be any worse. Usually, bad reviews don't keep a movie from turning a profit. Movies like Transformers get consistently bad reviews, but generate massive amounts of money. In fact, Terminator: Age of Extinction was the more profitable movie of the year last year, despite low reviews. But Fantastic Four doesn't have that going for it. If it opens with numbers even lower than the Green Hornet or can't even top Mission Impossible in its second week, then it's in trouble. Even Amazing Spider-Man 2 debuted at number one when it came out. This is just a low point for Fox that they're never going to live down.

That said, I don't think they're going to let the film rights revert back to Marvel. I think they're going to keep trying to cling to them. But if this movie can't turn a profit for all the money they put into it, then maybe they'll realize that F4 just isn't worth it and focus on X-men movies. At least with the X-men, they have a Kevin Feige type visionary with Bryan Singer. So long as they don't let him walk like he did before X3, they can make X-men movies that will turn a profit and not upset everybody. Without that, I think Fantastic Four really is doomed while in Fox's hands.

[Brian B]

In other news, Deadline is saying that this movie is tracking for the high $20 million range for its opening weekend.

Dang, if true, that's a big loss. It will, of course, drop by half at least every week after that.

Realistically, this thing disappears in 3 weeks and it won't even hit $50 million domestically. Originally, the movie was tracking for a $50 million opening. That's a dud, right there.

[AndrewCrossett]

So did Stan Lee reprise his role as Willie Lumpkin in this?

Now, that could have saved the movie.

[beetee]

The real lesson here.... Don't piss off the Nerds.... Seriously. We may be a small percentage of the audience, but when riled, we can bad buzz and stinkbomb a film like nothing else. Does it always work? No because other Nerds may want to go see the damn thing. It worked in this case because of the piling on of disregard for the source material, the fans, even audience expectations. Add to it a rather cynical playing of The Race Card and you get a three layer Turd Cake with green vomit icing.

[blackbolt396]

The real lesson here.... Don't piss off the Nerds.... Seriously. We may be a small percentage of the audience, but when riled, we can bad buzz and stinkbomb a film like nothing else. Does it always work? No because other Nerds may want to go see the damn thing. It worked in this case because of the piling on of disregard for the source material, the fans, even audience expectations. Add to it a rather cynical playing of The Race Card and you get a three layer Turd Cake with green vomit icing.

The race card? Source material ?

[Olslick]

The real lesson here.... Don't piss off the Nerds.... Seriously. We may be a small percentage of the audience, but when riled, we can bad buzz and stinkbomb a film like nothing else. Does it always work? No because other Nerds may want to go see the damn thing. It worked in this case because of the piling on of disregard for the source material, the fans, even audience expectations. Add to it a rather cynical playing of The Race Card and you get a three layer Turd Cake with green vomit icing.

No. Just no. As a "nerd" I don't want to take the credit for this. The implication there would amount to the "nerd" community being okay with such hot garbage as Iron Man 2 and 3, ASM 2, Wolverine Origins and Thor: the Dark World. As an actual fan of comic books and movies, or "nerd", most of what's been done movie wise has been crap. This is just one of the very few instances where the box office returns match just how awful the movie actually is.