Superhero movies appear to be back. After Superman opened to a storming box office a couple of weeks back, Fantastic Four: First Steps, by a whisker, has done even better. But damn, it was close.
Superman made a fantastic $122 million in its domestic opening weekend, but lagged behind internationally, with $95 million coming in from the other 78 nations. Fantastic Four: First Steps, however, flipped that around—the latest entry in the MCU took in $118 million in the United States, but $100 million worldwide. And yes, you’re right, those figures are all incredibly close.
$218 million for Fantastic Four to Superman’s $217 million means both Marvel and DC can be feeling pretty good about things right now. It also does put a lot of the last couple of weeks of handwringing about Supe’s international performance in a different perspective
Post Superman’s release, James Gunn has given a bunch of comments about why the film may not have performed as well overseas as hoped, most recently claiming that “anti-American sentiment around the world” could be behind the discrepancy, as well as suggesting Superman isn’t as well known in some foreign territories as names like Batman. But given both superhero flicks have made almost identical amounts, it seems that it could be a lot less about Superman specifically, and perhaps more about superheroes themselves.
Things are still going well for Superman. After three weekends of release, it’s now crossed the half-billion point, with a reported total of $502,701,478, with percent of that domestic. In contrast, 54 percent of Fantastic Four’s opening total is from the U.S. So, again, rounding errors, but the same pattern.
The reason anyone cares about this is the implication that the perceived lack of overseas sales means these films might not be making as much money as they “should.” Looking through this years’s biggest movies, the normal proportion of total box office to come in domestically is between 32 and 50 percent. F1: The Movie, the extraordinary advertising feature starring Brad Pitt, made just 32 percent of its $510 million in the U.S. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is on $592 million, with 33 percent coming in from American audiences. Even Captain America: Brave New World got more than 50 percent abroad, and the same for Thunderbolts*.
A Minecraft Movie teeters shy of the big one billion at $995 million, 44.4 percent domestic, while the biggest American movie of the year so far, Lilo & Stitch, got 42 percent of its $1 billion from home shores. (The biggest movie of 2025, the Chinese animated film Ne Zha II which has pulled in an eye-watering $1.9 billion, got just one percent of that in the U.S.!)
So, given all this, producers and distributors will be wondering why international audiences aren’t showing up to skew the stats in a similar way for these two superhero movies. While sitting on thrones made of diamond-encrusted gold bullion.
It’ll be interesting to see if Fantastic Four: First Steps has the same legs as Superman, especially given it’s a somewhat more obscure property among the non-comics-reading public. Still, it’s already the 13th biggest film of the year after just a couple of days.
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