Superheroics are back? «Fantastic Four» breaks franchise record for opening weekend, and «Superman» celebrates $500 million box office

After the last years of downtime superhero movies seem to be slowly regaining their audience, as new projects from DC and Marvel are performing well at the box office: «Superman» passed the half-billion-dollar box office mark in its third weekend, while the new «Fantastic Four» brought the studio a record opening in 2025.

In its first weekend, «Fantastic Four: The First Steps» earned $218 million worldwide, with $100 million coming from overseas release — figures slightly higher than «Superman»’s $95 million, but DC’s creation was ahead of its competitor in terms of total box office of $220 million. In the international box office, the top markets for the Marvel film were Mexico ($12 million), the UK ($10.8 million), France ($5.7 million), and Brazil ($5.1 million), while the Chinese debut was unsuccessful compared to «Superman» — $4.5 million vs. $6.6 million.

The overall box office performance of «First Steps» was also the best debut for Marvel in 2025, surpassing «Thunderbirds» and «Captain America; ; marked a record opening for a franchise previously owned by 20th Century Fox; and also enabled Disney to become the first Hollywood studio to earn more than $3 billion in ticket sales this year.

Matt Shackman’s film tells the story of a superhero team consisting of the Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), the Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), the Creature (Ebon Moss-Bacrak), and Mr. Fantastic himself, played by the ubiquitous Pedro Pascal. The renewed fantasy quartet must protect the Earth from a voracious cosmic god named Galactus (Ralph Fiennes) and his mysterious Herald (Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer).

The worthy debut of «First Steps» is not surprising, given the favorable first reviews that rated the movie as one of the best Marvel creations. The audience rating is also quite high — over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing. ITC film reviewer Denis Fedoruk gave Fantastic Four» a decent 7/10, although he noted that the film does not stand out for its original narrative and does not go beyond the typical superhero story. The full text of the review is available here:

Just like «Superman», «Formula 1» with Brad Pitt has passed the $500 million mark in earnings, only strengthening its position in the as Apple’s first box office hit. «Jurassic World Rebirth» meanwhile has a gross of $700 million — it is one of three Hollywood films to hit this milestone this year. However, the pressure is still high in this case, as the previous three films in the dinosaur franchise earned $1 billion each.

The next major Marvel movie projects will be «Spider-Man: A Brand New Day» and «Avengers: Doomsday», which will start in July and December 2026, respectively. Meanwhile, DC is preparing a new look for «Supergirl» with Milly Alcock as of June 26, 2026.

Source: Variety, IGN, THR