In a move that surprises absolutely no one, Fox has taken off the Fantastic Four 2 release date from its schedule in 2017. The move comes after the franchise failed to engage audiences in its reboot over the summer, resulting in a net loss for the studio.
Before filming on this year’s franchise-starter had even begun, Fox had set up a Fantastic Four 2 release date for the height of summer in July 2017. At the start of the year, they then moved it up to June. And then they shuffled it again back in March, pushing it back by a week to avoid Star Wars Episode VIII.
Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four then bombed at the August box office, netting $56.1m at home and $111.8m internationally. Its global haul was $167.9m off a $120m budget, and talk of a sequel very quickly died down.
Last month, Fox announced a June 2017 release date for Kingsman 2, only one week after the previously-announced Fantastic Four 2 release date. That pretty much guaranteed we wouldn’t be seeing the Marvel heroes returning for that slot, at the very least. And our suspicions have now been confirmed with Fox taking it off their schedule altogether.
It’s great news for Paramount, which has free reign over the weekend as a result with World War Z 2. Brad Pitt is returning to the franchise which grossed $540m off a $190m budget in its 2013 debut. And he’s currently opening solo at the box office, though that’s sure to change as we get closer to the slot.
For now, there’s no official confirmation about whether the studio is still planning to develop a sequel to Trank’s movie, albeit perhaps tweaking some elements. There appear to be mixed feelings about returning among the cast members, and it’s perhaps more likely that Fox will go back to the drawing board in a few years and start over from scratch.
The studio already has over a dozen movies planned for 2017. And moving Kingsman 2 into a similar June 2017 slot means they won’t be short of action over the lucrative summer period.
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