Box Office Tracking & Forecasts: THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS ($125-136M+) Eyes One of Marvel’s Best Late Summer Debuts; Early Outlooks for I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and SMURFS

The full version of this report appears in Box Office Theory’s Substack newsletter.

Yes, we’ve been looking at films six weeks from opening in theaters. Since a pretty major summer title went on sale earlier this week, and another one goes early next week, an executive decision was made to make an exception in today’s report with a seven-week preliminary analysis…

Key Tracking Factors & Rationale:

• The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25) began pre-sales earlier this week, marking the next phase of Marvel Studios’ widely anticipated introduction of the ensemble team previously bought to the big screen in two iterations by Fox between 2005 and 2015.
  • Scoring over 200 million views at launch in February, the first full trailer generated one of the best social viewing benchmarks of any recent Marvel film outside Deadpool & Wolverine.
  • Initial pre-sales this week marked the best of any 2025 release across multiple exhibitor samples and Fandango.
  • Fan demand to bring Marvel’s First Family into the MCU has been loud for years in the wake of the franchise’s numerous other successful adaptations of beloved characters, while a retro-futuristic period setting will make effective marketing toward casual viewers challenging to some extent.
  • While some Marvel sentiment has been watered down by excessive volume of content and some word-of-mouth misfires, First Steps is being billed as another return to form (following Thunderbolts* strong reception) for the MCU with the added assumption that it will somehow tease events to come in Avengers: Doomsday, set for a December 2026 release. Whether that excitement translate to similar general audience curiosity will largely be up to marketing over the next seven weeks.
  • At the risk of understating, a release two weeks after Superman  (July 11) will be incredibly interesting to follow. In an era when many audiences have become more selective about which comic book films get them into cinemas, the year’s two biggest properties from that realm will aim to coexist in the lucrative late summer corridor. Either way, die hard fans will show up for both.
  • First Steps, naturally, will take over IMAX and many premium screens during Superman‘s third weekend. From there, it will all come down to each respective film’s word of mouth.
  • Among the MCU’s late summer (July and August) openers, First Steps is currently eyeing a potential top 3 opening (Deadpool & Wolverine‘s $211.4 million, Thor: Love and Thunder‘s $144.2 million, and Spider-Man: Homecoming‘s $117 million).
• Also joining public forecasts this week are two mid-July counter-programmers — Sony’s I Know What You Did Last Summer revival sequel and Paramount’s Smurfs — in between the DC and Marvel behemoths.
  • Legacy horror sequels have had a solid track record in recent years thanks to the box office success of Halloween, Scream and, most recently, Final Destination: Bloodlines.
  • The return of Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. could entice Gen X and millennial fans of the franchise to turn up as late 90s/early 2000s nostalgia has become a significant driver in pop culture of late.
  • Social sentiment, trailer reactions, and views have been more mixed toward this legacy sequel’s early marketing compared to that of the aforementioned franchises. In the middle of a fairly crowded summer slate, buzz will need to grow as it remains to be seen if there’s the same level of nostalgia and demand for a series continuation as other horror IP.
• Paramount’s animated Smurfs hopes to leverage a star voice cast led by Rihanna, John Goodman, Nick Offerman, Kurt Russell and more.
  • Opening four weeks after Pixar’s Elio means this will be the first major animated release of the July corridor as summer vacations are peaking around the country. Early modeling is comparable to last year’s The Garfield Movie.
  • Nostalgia for parents and easily accessible comedic entertainment for kids could provide a solid mix of content in between live-action, PG-13 blockbusters.
  • Two weeks later, The Bad Guys 2 will open in early August as a franchise with higher awareness and appeal among today’s younger generations.
• On other fronts:
  • 28 Years Later had a strong start in its pre-sale window, posting the best first-day sales of any horror release in 2025 so far for multiple exhibitors and Fandango.
  • F1 pre-sales continue to impress across exhibitor samples with notable strength in premium formats. Our models remain more bullish than other traditional industry measurements, but momentum is increasingly in favor of a sleeper breakout if the film connects with general audiences outside Formula 1 fans.

6-Week Box Office Calendar, Tracking & Forecasts
as of 6/5/25

All forecasts and tracking ranges above are reflective only of how the films are trending or expected to trend ahead of release. They are not final forecasts or predictions and are subject to revision at any time based on evolving market conditions and various circumstances that are factored into our modeling.