We already reported on Fantastic Four‘s terrible box office returns, and we’ve picked apart the rumors about problems on set and the hints that director Josh Trank might have been telling the truth when he said his version was different.
Now we know the film pulled in $26 million in domestic box office in its opening weekend on a budget of $120 million (plus marketing costs). In other words, not a good return. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Barton Crockett (analyst at FBR & Co.) estimated the film would open at $27.7 million (it did even worse), and Fox would have to write off more than $60 million in loses.
Despite the likelihood of losing money on this reboot, Fox is unlikely to give the first family back to Marvel. HitFix is reporting that Fox is still moving forward with a sequel, although they may miss their originally planned release date of June 9, 2017. We’d already heard rumors that Fox is mulling over moving a Deadpool sequel into Fantastic Four 2‘s release date.
This comes at an especially bad time for Fox. They were already forecasting they’d make $200 million less in box office profits during the 2016 fiscal year than they made in 2015. That’s reality, though.
