Richard & Sean: ‘Fantastic Four’ & the Missing Int’l Audience
Plus: You want original films? You got ‘em (in Q1 2026)
If Fantastic Four had opened like Thunderbolts* did ($74 million), “Marvel would be talking about getting back in the lunchbox business,” says Richard Rushfield. But that’s not what happened.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps silver-surfed its way to $118 million in North America and $218 million globally, marking a solid start for Marvel’s first family. “This wasn’t just, ‘Oh, it made $5 million-$10 million more,’” Sean McNulty notes. The debut was decidedly above that of Thunderbolts* and Captain America: Brave New World, Marvel titles that had underperformed earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Marvel’s rival, DC Comics, has been revived culturally thanks to Superman, which has passed $500 million worldwide (the James Gunn movie likely needs to reach at least $600 million to achieve profitability, but as Richard and Sean have previously discussed, its value to Warner Bros. also lies in how it relaunches the studio’s superhero universe). So now that superhero fatigue has been pronounced dead on the scene, the capes will be back... in 11 months, when DC’s Supergirl arrives in theaters in June.
Until then, the industry can fret over a new recurring issue: weak international numbers. Only 42 percent of Superman’s total tally has come from abroad, while Fantastic Four hasn’t fared much better at 46 percent. Why? Opinions about America have “plummeted” over the last year, and selling films about characters like Superman — who stand for truth, justice and the American way — has become a challenge. It “gives those movies a boulder to have to push up the hill,” Richard says.
Elsewhere in today’s Monday Morning Quarterbacks discussion: Q1 of 2026 is wide open — will any of a slew of original films break out? Should Hollywood take another swing at Smurfs after this summer’s painful outing? And can The Bad Guys 2 capitalize on the streaming success of the original?
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