Long Range Forecast: THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS Looks to $100M-Plus Opening

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Long Range Forecast — July 25, 2025

The Fantastic Four: First Steps | Disney

Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $100M – $125M

The Marvel Cinematic Universe enters a new era with a rebooted Fantastic Four, which we expect to provide a much-needed course correction for the franchise following a series of mistakes that has seen the one-time box office juggernaut spinning its wheels.

The last two MCU movies to introduce a more-or-less completely new-to-film lineup of characters were Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ($75.3M domestic opening, $224.5M domestic total) and Eternals ($71.2M domestic opening, $164.8M domestic total), both of which were released in autumn 2021. Our forecasting panel has The Fantastic Four: First Steps above both of those films with a $100M – $125M predicted domestic opening, reflective of robust marketing efforts from Disney and curiosity surrounding First Steps as a “new beginning” of sorts for the floundering MCU.

The franchise has had a rocky start to the year, notching a pair of sub-$100M domestic openers with Captain America: Brave New World ($88.8M domestic opening, $200.5M domestic total) and Thunderbolts* ($74.3M domestic opening, $189.9M domestic total). Among post-2020 Marvel titles, our predicted range puts The Fantastic Four: First Steps in line with February 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($106.1M domestic opening, $214.5M domestic total) and May 2023’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 ($118.4M domestic opening, $358.9M domestic total).

The director of the Guardians trilogy, James Gunn, just hit one out of the park with the $125M domestic debut of Superman for Warner Bros.—a fact that arguably paints a hopeful picture for The Fantastic Four, as it indicates a positive critical reception and word-of-mouth can still lure moviegoers out to a superhero reboot in spite of any “superhero fatigue” caused by recent genre underperformers like Kraven the Hunter ($11M domestic opening, $25M domestic total), Joker: Folie à Deux ($37.6M domestic opening, $58.3M domestic total), Madame Web ($15.3M domestic opening, $43.8M domestic total), and Shazam! Fury of the Gods ($30.1M domestic opening, $57.6M domestic total).

Tracking Updates [as of July 14]