There is a neck and neck race to toppleThe Fantastic Four: First Stepsat the domestic box office. The new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie had the franchise’s best domestic debut of 2025 with $117.6 million, but it followed that with one of the franchise’s worst drops, falling 66% during its sophomore weekend.
AlthoughFantastic Fourhit No. 1 during its first two weekends,it faces competition from a pair of new releases. The first isDisney’s legacy sequelFreakier Friday, which reunites original 2003 stars Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. The second is the Julia Garner horror movieWeapons, which is director Zach Cregger’s follow-up to his 2022 hitBarbarian.
PerVariety, new projections show thatboth new releases are expected to work in tandem to knockThe Fantastic Four: First Stepsto No. 3on the domestic box office chart. The superhero movie is only set to earn between $18 and $20 million during its third weekend. However, it remains to be seen which new movie will ultimately take No. 1.
Freakier Fridayis projected to debut between $27 and $30 million, whileWeaponsranges between $25 and $30 million. Should the horror movie hit the upper bound of its range,it’s entirely possible that it could nab No. 1 from the Disney moviein spite of the fact that its R rating limits its possible audience compared to the PG comedy.
What This Means For The Fantastic Four: First Steps
The fact that theFantastic Four: First Stepsbox officeis not looking strong enough for it to remain on the chart for three consecutive weekends is not unprecedented. The only superhero movie of 2025 to top the chart for three weekends so far isCaptain America: Brave New World, asThunderbolts*andSupermanwere both only No. 1 for two weekends.
However, prospects are looking mixed for the superhero movie in terms of the raw numbers. Those latter titleswere toppled by movies with much bigger debuts, asThunderbolts*was unseated byFinal Destination Bloodlines' $51.6 million debut whileSupermanwas usurped byThe Fantastic Four’s own $117.6 million.
However,The Fantastic Fourisstill tracking above the raw third-weekend grosses of the previous Marvel movies.Captain Americaonly took in $14.8 million during the same frame, whileThunderbolts*made $16.6 million. The only superhero movie to outdoFirst Steps' current range isSuperman, which earned $24.8 million during its third weekend.
Our Take On The Projected Weekend Box Office
While the future performance of2025’sThe Fantastic Four: First Stepsremains questionable,these overall projections are ultimately a big win forWeapons, which has a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing. The fact that it could potentially outgross the sequel to a major comedy hit is quite astounding.
Additionally,its debut should easily clearBarbarian’s own $10.5 million. This was never a guarantee, especially considering the fact that 2025’s other directorial follow-up to a major horror hit - the Philippou Brothers’Bring Her Back- opened with just $7.2 million compared to the $10.4 million debut of their previous feature,Talk to Me.
However, whileThe Fantastic Four: First Stepscould still inch its way towards ending up in the black if it maintains a more consistent audience hold, it should have been able to hold its own much better in the quiet period at the beginning of August.
