LISTEN: Good First Steps at Box Office for ‘Fantastic Four’; ‘South Park,’ ‘Phineas & Ferb,’ ‘King of the Hill’ Sessions Animate Comic Con

“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” kept up the momentum at the summer box office that has boosted Hollywood’s year-to-date haul at the turnstyles to a more than 10% gain over last year’s strike-disrupted frame.

The nuances of “Fantastic Four’s” performance in its opening weekendat the box office are discussed on the latest episode of podcast “Daily Variety.” Rebecca Rubin, Variety‘s senior film and media reporter, explains all that Marvel Studios has riding on the film that introduces a new generation of new-ish characters to the vaunted Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film’s $118 million opening weekend haul was fueled largely by the core target audience for Marvel movies. But that might change.

“About 68 % of opening weekend audiences were men,” Rubin says. “That was a little surprising to me, not because it’s surprising that men like to see superhero movies, because that is really the target demographic. But if you’ve see if you’ve seen ‘Fantastic Four,’ Vanessa Kirby’s character and storyline is very female-centric and she’s pregnant. I don’t think Marvel’s had a pregnant superhero before. So I am curious if in the coming weeks it’ll start to over-index a little more with females because I’m sure there will be people who resonate a lot with her character.”

“Fantastic Four” also upheld another recent trend for big-budget pics that Hollywood is happy to see. Moviegoing is increasingly driven by premium-priced tickets for large-screen theaters a la Imax.

“Nearly 50% of ticket sales came from premium large formats,” Rubin says, “which means that when people did go to see it, they really wanted to see it on the biggest and the brightest screens. And that has definitely been a trend that has been increasing since the pandemic. When audiences want to leave the house, they really are over-indexing on IMAX, Dolby, 4DX — just these screens that they really can’t replicate in the home.”

Also in this episode, Michael Schneider, Variety‘s television editor, delivers the highlights from what proved to be a quieter San Diego Comic Con gatheringthis past weekend. George Lucas’ surprise appearanceand the controversy stirred up by “South Park’s” skewering of President Trump were among the talked-about moments from the four-day marathon.

Schneider himself moderated panels for the upcoming revivals of “King of the Hill” (for Hulu) and “Phineas and Ferb” (for Disney+).

There wasn’t as much significant news out of Comic Con but that didn’t seem to matter to the hardcore fans. The cosplay game was fierce this year, Schneider says.

“My favorite costume — I was walking down the street and along comes a man carrying some balloons, wearing a blue turtleneck, pants, big bushy mustache. It was Milchick from Severance,” he says. “Whoever was cosplaying as Milchick did such a fantastic job, down to the balloons with Adam Scott’s face on them. It was brilliant.”

(Pictured: “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”)

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