Fantastic Four
Rate Movie[Total: 34 Average: 1.6]
- Directed By: Josh Trank
- Written By: Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, Josh Trank
- Release Date: August 7, 2015
- Domestic Distributor: FOX
- Cast: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell
Box Office Info:
| Budget: $124.5 million | Financed by: FOX; TSG Entertainment |
|---|---|
| Domestic Box Office: $56,117,548 | Overseas Box Office: $111,860,048 |
The gross budget for Fantastic Four was
$154,778,784 and after rebates the net cost was $124.5 million.
This mess was financed by FOX and additional capital from TSG, which had a slate financing deal at the studio. The bad buzz began four months before the August 7, 2015 release date, when news broke that director Josh Trank was removed from his next project, which was a Star Wars spin-off and his dismissal was from his erratic behavior on Fantastic Four.
Stories began to leak that this was a troubled production that required major reshoots, as well as reports of alleged poor behavior on and off the set from Trank — such as isolating himself from the cast and crew, he and his dogs caused $100,000 in damages to a rented house, he would hole up in a tent on set and cut himself off from everyone and just his inability to carry a massive production.
As the stories continued to leak and buzz was turning sour on the picture, Trank hired the Hollywood pitbull lawyer Marty Singer to get him through this fiasco. The widespread reports of studio interference, coupled with atrocious reviews and marketing material that could not even spin this turkey into interesting 30 second ad spots, Fantastic Four was headed straight for disaster. A disparaging tweet by Josh Trank (“A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.”) tweeted just before the opening, just added to the toxic brew.
FOX did fully back the picture with an expensive marketing campaign, investing $24.24M into TV spots (as per iSpotTV), plus millions more in other P&A expenses — with a domestic spend far north of $40M. Fantastic Four was tracking one month before its release toward a $55 million opening, which was lowered to a mid $40 million opening about a week before its release.
It opened against The Gift, Ricki and the Flash and Shaun the Sheep Movie and Fantastic Four came in way below expectations with $25,685,737 — placing #2 behind the holdover Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Audiences gave the picture a terrible C- cinemascore and predictably, Fantastic Four declined a huge 68.2% in its second weekend to $8,168,756 and sank 54.3% in its third frame to $3,733,632. The domestic run closed with $56,117,548.
Overseas, Fantastic Four pulled in a mild $111,860,048. The worldwide cume was $167.9. FOX would see returned about $92.3M after theaters take their percentage of the gross — which would almost cover only the global P&A costs. A China release date was to be announced, but nothing materialized. Plans to franchise with this cast, were cancelled after the poor box office and reception. Rupert Murdoch announced to FOX investors that the fiscal quarter was dented by “the poor performance of The Fantastic Four.” The movie ended as a loss near $60M.
The ultimate lesson of this box office fiasco is that if 20th Century Fox had given up the film rights to the Fantastic Four back to Marvel/Disney or make a deal with them regarding to keep the rights to distributing future films with Marvel’s intellectual property like with Sony, it would have saved them a lot of money in the long run.
But they didn’t, and this film was a heavy contributor to them getting bought out by Disney in 2019, making this whole reboot of Fantastic Four absolutely pointless.
What a pathetic attempt at a superhero film.
Now here’s some delicious irony: this film was only made because FOX didn’t want its rights to the Fantastic Four franchise to default back to Disney-owned Marvel (if a studio sits on a property and does nothing with it then Marvel gets the rights back). And of course, FOX has since been brought out by Disney, making this entire endeavour ultimately pointless.
Some more irony: the 2005 film had promotion with Fox’s reviled Marvel bomb “Elektra”, when they promoted that the first trailer would premiere in front of the film. They would do the EXACT SAME THING with this reviled Marvel bomb, promoting that the first trailer for “Deadpool” would premiere with it.