Last weekend things looked pretty bright for Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. It netted $117.6 million over the course of its three-day domestic debut, the critical reception was much better than for Captain America: Brave New World, and audience word of mouth was similarly positive. It looked like the Marvel Cinematic Universe was on a bit of a rebound. It didn’t even have particularly formidable competition this weekend, with only the animated The Bad Guys 2 and The Naked Gun entering the field. But its sophomore weekend saw a 66% decline, worse than even the highest expectations. Specifically, analysts expected it to drop somewhere between the range of 55% and 60%.
The good news is that First Steps again won the weekend with its give or take $40 million haul. But neither of the big newcomers were ever going to beat it unless one drastically overperformed and, even with exceptional reviews for The Naked Gun, it was still tough to imagine it scoring the number one spot.
The First Steps‘ massive drop can’t even be blamed on audiences being weary of a Fantastic Four movie actually being good. That would have been fair last weekend. There was at least some possibility of people having seen the three previous big screen attempts and deciding to stay away from Shakman’s film. But they did turn out, and their positive response to it last weekend should have resulted in a relatively slim drop this weekend.
Instead, the 66% plummet is indicative of a larger problem the MCU is facing at the moment. These are no longer four quadrant event films, they’re really only attracting the IP’s core audience.
This is actually the eighth largest drop from freshman to sophomore weekend for the overarching franchise. Two of them have been in the 70-80% range, but for different reasons. Specifically, The Marvels (the MCU’s most notorious flop) plummeted 78.1% after an already disastrous opening weekend. Spider-Man: No Way Home faced a massive 75.3% drop, but that was due in no small part to just how many people came out for its debut.
MCU movies in the 60-70% drop range include Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (69.9%), Captain America: Brave New World (68.3%), Black Widow (67.8%), Thor: Love and Thunder (67.7%), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (67%). Notice how all of those movies were a part of either Phase 4 or Phase 5.
The First Steps‘ drastic fall seems to serve as a sign that the MCU has not, in fact, rebounded. It’s also a bit of a troubling sign for Avengers: Doomsday. If any MCU project directly leads into Doomsday, it’s The Fantastic Four. Doomsday will, of course, open very high. Robert Downey Jr. is coming back and every Avengers movie pulls in larger crowds than the typical MCU project. But how will its sophomore weekend fare? It’s going to have a massive budget just like Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, but will it be an event film for more than a single three-day stretch? Time will tell.
The post The Fantastic Four’s Massive Box Office Drop Proves the MCU Has a Problem appeared first on ComicBook.com.