“Fantastic Four ”suffers significant week 2 drop at domestic box office, but still holds on to top spot

Key Points

• The Fantastic Four: First Steps scored another No. 1 at the domestic box office.

• Two premieres took the No. 2 and No. 3 spots on the domestic charts: animated sequel The Bad Guys 2 and action-comedy reboot The Naked Gun.

• Fantastic Four‘s nemeses next week are Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in another Disney-distributed production, Freakier Friday.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is beginning to stumble.

Marvel‘s big summer tentpole held on to the top spot at the domestic box office in its second week of release, and the margin of victory was significant. This weekend’s silver medalist, the animated sequel The Bad Guys 2, earned $22.2 million in its premiere. Fantastic Four, meanwhile, earned $40 million in its sophomore outing. But setting that film’s performance in a broader context shows that this is one win that the comics giant might not want to get too hasty about celebrating.

Most glaringly, Fantastic Four‘s $40 million week 2 domestic take represents a staggering 66 percent drop from its premiere haul of $118 million. That’s a concerning statistic if you’re Marvel, considering the last MCU release, Thunderbolts*, dropped 57 percent from week 1 to 2 (still not a great number, all things considered, and Thunderbolts* opened to a whole $42 million less than Fantastic Four). Plus, the film’s current DCU rival, Superman, dropped only 53 percent in the same time frame.

There’s also the fact that the lead-up to Fantastic Four‘s release was paved with overwhelmingly positive advance notices, and the runway ahead of the film remains mostly clear. Finally, while the superhero group composed of Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn earned the American gold, the film lost out globally to the Chinese historical drama Dead to Rights.

The worldwide box office leader takes a hard look at the 1937-1938 Nanjing Massacre, perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army against Chinese civilians and prisoners of war during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The gritty period riff follows a postman (Liu Haroan) who hides Chinese soldiers and civilians while working as a photo developer during the Japanese occupation. It grossed $82.3 million this weekend from Chinese markets alone, compared with Fantastic Four‘s $79.6 million from 53 global markets.

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Superman is still a player in the summer box office story, though no longer a major one. The DCU’s first film sailed to the No. 4 spot with a $13.8 million gross in its fourth week of release, bringing its domestic gross to $316.2 million and global gross to $551.2 million. James Gunn‘s new vision of the last son of Krypton has now surpassed the lifetime gross of 2013’s Man of Steel and approaches 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — though not adjusted for inflation.

Elsewhere in this weekend’s top 5 are two premieres: The Bad Guys 2 and the action-comedy reboot The Naked Gun. The latter film took the No. 3 spot with a $17 million domestic gross and the No. 4 spot globally with $28.5 million, a good deal under The Bad Guys 2‘s $44.5 million global haul. Against a budget of $42 million, the Akiva Schaffer-directed comic caper starring  Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson gives hope to comedies in a hostile theatrical environment for the genre.

Other notable holdovers this weekend include Jurassic World Rebirth, which grossed $8.7 million in its fifth week of release for a $317.6 million domestic haul; F1: The Movie, which grossed $4.1 million in its sixth week for a $173.2 million domestic haul; and How to Train Your Dragon, which keeps its flame lit in week 8 with a $1.3 million gross, making for a $260.4 million domestic haul (and despite the title being available on video-on-demand).

The path is potentially clear for a Fantastic Four three-peat at next week’s domestic cage match, though one film may possess the power to overtake the title.

Freakier Friday finally lands in theaters after a jam-packed publicity rollout. Disney is hoping that the always-bankable Jamie Lee Curtis; goodwill toward original star Lindsay Lohan (in the midst of a major comeback); and a targeted twin pull on the Millennial parent–Gen Alpha tween demographics will pack theaters for a lucrative premiere.

Also arriving in theaters next week are Weapons, the new horror film from Barbarian director Zach Cregger, and My Mother’s Wedding, a feel-good family comedy starring Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, and Kristin Scott Thomas.

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