With so many of its recent projects failing to hit the mark, Marvel Studios is reportedly putting all its faith in the upcoming Fantastic Four and X-Men reboots.
Sure enough, Deadpool 3 — set to be stuffed to the gills with cameos from 20th Century Fox vets — is the only MCU movie releasing in 2024 while the very first entry in Phase Six is May 2025’s Fantastic Four. From WandaVision‘s Matt Shakman, this first crack from Kevin Feige at the First Family is (infamously) the fourth time Reed Richards and his team have made it to the big screen.
As Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original creations for the Marvel universe as we know it in 1961, the Fantastic Four carry with them a huge cultural cache, so it’s understandable why Marvel is banking on there being so much excitement and interest in their return to cinemas. But, when you look at what Fox’s films actually managed to haul in, resting the future of the MCU on even the significant shoulders of the ever-lovin’ Thing seems like a pretty tall order.
2025’s Fantastic Four must out-gross the entire Fox franchise combined or it will be deemed a failure
2015’s Fantastic Four is one of the worst superhero movies of the past decade, that’s no secret, but these days there’s a lot of nostalgic fondness for the Fantastic Four films of the mid-aughts, so much so that you might think they were enormous hits for their time.
In actual fact, both 2005’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer only drew in around $300 million worldwide — specifically, $333.5 million and $302 million, respectively. Add in the paltry $168 million gross of Fant4stic and you have a franchise that only brought home a grand total of $803.3 million for Fox across three movies.
On a good day, a Marvel Studios movie makes that on its own, no problem, but with the studio putting so much pressure on Fantastic Four to succeed, it needs to rake in as close to $1 billion as it can. In other words, the 2025 reboot really has to deliver something extra-special and universally beloved so that it has a hope of amassing more than every other FF film before it put together.
Otherwise, if it fails to reach past $800 million, then it will simply be another so-so Multiverse Saga release that proves audiences only care about the Avengers and Spider-Man these days. Maybe if Shakman really is stuffing his cast full of major names like Pedro Pascal and Anya Taylor-Joy the fourth Fantastic Four outing might stand a chance of creating the cinematic storm it needs to.
