‘Fantastic Four' Won Grownups But Lost Kids And Families To ‘Superman'

Forbes

30-07-2025

Director Matt Shakman's Marvel superhero franchise launch Fantastic Four: First Steps is heading into its second weekend having won grownups but lost the kids and family audience to writer-director James Gunn's Superman, as a different paradigm takes hold of blockbuster business at the box office, and superpowers won't change it.
Fantastic Four By The Numbers
After a low-end debut weekend outcome of just $216 million worldwide, Fantastic Four looks to enter the weekend right around $155 million domestic, and I anticipate a second weekend of about $43.5 million stateside. With international, the global total is eyeing $357 million by end of business Sunday.
That's potentially a sizable sophomore drop, especially compared to Superman's own solid second weekend hold. The difference seems due to what I feel is a simple equation: Superman is mostly an all-ages family film that also has strong appeal for adults, Fantastic Four is a mostly adult film that also appeals to all-ages.
Put another way, the terrific Superman is made for the kids first, and the also-terrific Fantastic Four is made for the parents first, and only one of those approaches rides the current zeitgeist driving cinematic business.
Some pundits expect Fantastic Four to hold better than I do, and to be sure it's entirely possible. Fantastic Four might enjoy such good word of mouth that folks who skipped it opening weekend show up this weekend, and the allure of IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and 0ther premium formats might ensure better weekly holds as people waiting for those prime seat locations keep turning out. And this is the MCU, among the most powerful and successful brands in movie history, so you'd think their summer tentpole release sees steady turnout for several weeks.
But the falloff in family viewers and lower interest among teenage audiences points toward a less optimistic best-case scenario, in my own assessment. A worst-case probably sees it falls of a cliff with something closer to $150 million through the weekdays and $40 million domestic, and south of $350 million worldwide. Without decent holds, I don't see a path to a final gross north of $550 million.
This is lots of early speculation and depends entirely on what in fact the weekday numbers tell us about word-of-mouth driving business, and what the final second weekend ticket sales look like. There's room for high-end and low-end outcomes here, obviously, and Superman surprised with a solid second weekend hold that changed the narrative and expectations.
But signs pointed in the Man of Steel's favor, whereas those same signs don't bode as well for Fantastic Four: First Steps. It's a shift in perspective, but that's always been true of the distinctions between DC and Marvel, from the comics to the films, and now a new factor enters the frame and we'll see how each responds.
So far, though, James Gunn and Peter Safran as co-CEOs of DC Studios seem to have recognized the trend or at least sensed a need to lean into that direction (at least for their first foundational feature release), and it payed off. Superman is now flying high and looks to top $600 million, a much happier milestone for everyone involved.
Let's see if Keven Feige and Marvel Studios adopts a similar approach, or choose to stake out a position as the adults-first superhero cinematic world while looking to replicate Deadpool & Wolverine's and the Spider-Man franchise's enormous success in an often brutal and unforgiving new theatrical landscape.
Of course, I always say not to bet on Disney or Marvel, so Feige surely has plans and insights better than mine here, and I have no illusions I've figured something out that he hasn't. In a general sense, however, I think all of the complexity of this evolving cinematic situation can be summed up with hamburgers.
Fantastic Four vs Happy Meals?
McDonalds won the burger wars because they have Happy Meals, costumes, and playgrounds. They won the kids first, because they knew the kids would make sure (including with tantrums if necessary) that if the family went out to eat, they went to McDonalds. The result speaks for itself, with McDonalds behind only Starbucks for market share when it comes to eateries.
Win the kids' bellies, and their parents will follow. Because even weak burgers and fries with cold sodas still tastes good to kids, so add in 'free' toys and cookies in a cartoon box, and how can anyone else compete? All you need to do then is have some burgers for their parents, too. Again, quality matters less to a captive audience, right? And it gets easier to make that choice every time, especially if they've even got breakfast for you on the way to school or work, too.
Cinema is sort of heading that same route in many ways, as studios have increasingly been swallowed into massive corporate bundles that see everything and everyone as a commodity. If you want our dollars, what's the fastest route to our wallets? Look at what toys children want and what cartoons they watch and what video games they play on their phones, and then put most of your chips on those brands/IP (because that's what they are when the bosses decide to use them that way) knowing if the kids show up, they'll bring their parents, so you merely need to do minimum duty providing parents with anything to maintain their interest. Smarter studio conglomerates realize that throwing in some popular younger performers (TV, film, music, anything) to appear or provide voices and/or songs helps hook some teen audiences and provides a wider chain of interconnected merchandising to sell for associated brands.
That's how you have to talk to even explain this, but it's important to understand a grossly simplified but generally predictive summation of how most studios are starting to approach making films and distributing them. It's why most of the top 10 highest grossing films are primarily movies made for kids that add something for the parents, or the rare breakout 'parents got a babysitter' adult release like F1 for example (or Top Gun: Maverick for another).
If you make a would-be blockbuster film primarily geared toward adults, you better make darn sure it has a huge hook like Deadpool & Wolverine or Avatar that also works to make the kids either a co-dominant target demographic or such a close runner-up it's a distinction without a difference. Or, make it so appealing to grownups and the teenagers in the household that the younger ones are along for the ride regardless. Because otherwise, you have to roll the dice on being the breakout adult-focused movie that claws its way into the top of the box office charts.
This is not, by the way, any commentary (yet, as the crucial qualifier) on the movies themselves that are topping the charts. Of the ones I've seen so far, they're all highly entertaining and I get why not only the children in the audience but also the parents enjoyed them, and how this in turn led the parents to recommend it not merely to other parents but to other adults in general. Lilo & Stitch and A Minecraft Movie for example, or Superman as the standout superhero movie that applied the correct template and target demographic approach, which we'll discuss more in a moment.
So far, I'm grateful that despite the lack of much interest in overall quality and serious cinematic storytelling and diversity of approaches and stories, the actual artists still determine the final results and are still overwhelmingly committed to their crafts and work. But with studios seeing AI as a chance not merely to be a tool that elevates each crew member's and artists' abilities and work, but to try to replace them and reduce costs, as well as the demand to churn out sequels and spinoffs to maximize merchandising profits as fast as possible in case the kids all grow out of it too fast and the franchise is short-lived, the simple truth is that quality will be sacrificed.
I know, gasp, right? But I don't just mean in the general vague sense we all talk about in common discussion but which actually doesn't manifest as the overriding truth or definition of film and TV so far. Quality is in fact great, and improving overall. More options exist with more diverse types of more content for a larger audience, and it's only increasing. What happens next, though, will be determined by a lot of very powerful people, companies, and entities in ways that none of us – including them – can really predict anymore.
But we've seen the model at McDonalds, and it also took place amid rapidly improving industrial processes and distribution and expanding cities, driven by technological and social advances. It's not a perfect analogy, but I think once you think about it and look around, it makes a lot of sense and describes what we're seeing. Less like a carefully crafted and precise strategy, than a rough and bumpy outcome after lots of tactical trial and error favoring executives' own wallets than shareholders or studios per se at times, and finally settling into a structure that already existed and merely needed all the various parts to fall into place.
We're talking about the top of the box office charts of course, and the race for blockbuster results, so there will still be plenty of lower-tier movies and series produced. But I think the days of superhero cinema dominating the top-10 and having reserved seats in the top-5 are over, except for those occasions when the right template is applied (made for kids, also has something for adults) with a popular enough character/star that great audience grades and equally positive critical reviews generate massive turnout and repeat business from families, in turn spurring big turnout among teenagers and childless adults.
Fantastic Four, Superman, And Superheroes' Future
Aside from Avengers or other event-status team-ups like Deadpool & Wolverine, I doubt superhero movies will even return to semi-regularly hitting $1 billion or just a stone's throw away.
Instead, animated films and live-action remakes/adaptations of beloved animated movies/series/games will probably dominate box office charts now, while superhero cinema only cracks the top-10 with a couple of the best offerings from DC and Marvel, respectively, and most entries that seem to lean toward adult audiences still have heavy appeal to kids as well as the teenage audience. The direct appeal toward the child audiences with clear indicators for parents to attend as well. If it's too kid-focused and overtly lacks any potential adult appeal, there's risk only one parent or a babysitter takes only a few of the kids, instead of both parents and all children in the household – family audiences rule and the kids are in charge, basically.
Marvel always had a balance between being kid-friendly superhero fare and appealing to the grownups with smart, witty storytelling and well-defined characters in exciting stories with cool visual effects. Eye candy that isn't so unhealthy after all. But over time, as often happens, the films 'grew up' more with the audience and sometimes felt like they were far more adult-skewing and counted on the kids to keep up because it's still their favorite superheroes. I love most all of those films, but I realize the more they favor adult themed and adult-focused approaches, the less they can count on their reputation as family-friendly and assumptions of 'something for everybody.'
It may seem like a mild shift in perception and intent, but it's not, and even when audiences can't put their finger on it or articulate it precisely, they can sense the changes and shifts. They can tell when a story is talking mostly to them, mostly to their kids, or is treating them all like one big family. Each has advantages, and the better the quality of the storytelling and the offerings for kids and adults alike, the better the odds of success. But blockbuster success is going to require the latter two from now on, even if and when exceptions inevitably arise to prove the rule.
This isn't 'superhero fatigue," it's simply that unless the superhero movies keep up with the demands of audiences and their families, the genre will have to settle for the lower-end of the top-10 at the box office, and make adjustments to budgets and expectations. Which was always bound to be true, and the post-Avengers: Endgame slump was mostly due to the simple fact it's impossible to maintain that level of anticipation and perpetual self-one-upsmanship the MCU achieved for a brief time. The decline isn't failure, and they'll still be popular and can achieve blockbuster outcomes in the second tier pretty consistently. It will merely be the top tier that I expect will prove elusive from now on.
Fantastic Four will probably underperform significantly, like the previous two MCU releases, and Superman will probably wind up at the higher end of the $600 million range. Both are wonderful films with different approaches, and my comparison to McDonalds is about the conceptual appeal to kids and counting on them to bring the parents along, not to suggest films that are currently winning the box office race are cheap or otherwise 'fast food' per se.
Yet despite Fantastic Four and Superman, I fear that 'fast food' is too often precisely how studios perceive and approach kids' entertainment, and that they will revert to the worst instincts of profit-driven commodification more and more. So aside from loopholes like Avatar and Deadpool & Wolverine, parents will have a hard time driving the family car anywhere but to the latest Happy Meal Movies.