Fox’s Fantastic Four turned out to be a fantastic flop, grossing only about $26 million in North America in its opening weekend. The superhero saga had a reported budget of $120 million.
That the comic book adaptation disappointed in a summer chock full of superhero movies came as little surprise, especially after the truly awful reception Fantastic Four received from critics over the past week. At the moment, the movie has just a 9% fresh rating from critics on movie site Rotten Tomatoes, while Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers called out the film for its “soul-crushing, coma-inducing dullness.”
The movie, which featured a star-studded cast, was 21st Century Fox’s (FOX) latest attempt to adapt the Fantastic Four franchise, following a pair of films about a decade ago that also failed to win over critics. But even with the acidic reviews, the latest Fantastic Four was expected to come close to making $50 million in its first weekend at the domestic box office, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Instead, the film barely cleared $60 million globally.
With its dismal opening, Fantastic Four joins the ranks of recent summer box office busts, including 2013’s The Lone Ranger, which led to Walt Disney (DIS) taking a reported $100 million write-down.
Even with Fantastic Four’s poor performance, the summer of 2015 has been a relatively successful one for Hollywood, with strong showings from Disney and Comcast’s (CMCSA) Universal leading the way for what could be one of the highest-grossing movie summers in history.
