\n<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps\u201d kept up the momentum at the summer box office that has boosted Hollywood\u2019s year-to-date haul at the turnstyles to a more than 10% gain over last year\u2019s strike-disrupted frame.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe nuances of \u201cFantastic Four\u2019s\u201d performance in its opening weekend<\/strong> at the box office are discussed on the latest episode of podcast \u201cDaily Variety.\u201d Rebecca Rubin, Variety<\/em>\u2018s 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\u2019s $118 million opening weekend haul was fueled largely by the core target audience for Marvel movies. But that might change.<\/p>\n \n\t \u201cAbout 68 % of opening weekend audiences were men,\u201d Rubin says. \u201cThat was a little surprising to me, not because it\u2019s surprising that men like to see superhero movies, because that is really the target demographic. But if you\u2019ve see if you\u2019ve seen \u2018Fantastic Four,\u2019 Vanessa Kirby\u2019s character and storyline is very female-centric and she\u2019s pregnant. I don\u2019t think Marvel\u2019s had a pregnant superhero before. So I am curious if in the coming weeks it\u2019ll start to over-index a little more with females because I\u2019m sure there will be people who resonate a lot with her character.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFantastic Four\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cNearly 50% of ticket sales came from premium large formats,\u201d Rubin says, \u201cwhich 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 [high-end screens including] IMAX, Dolby, 4DX \u2014 just these screens that they really can\u2019t replicate in the home.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAlso in this episode, Michael Schneider, Variety<\/em>\u2018s television editor, delivers the highlights from what proved to be a quieter San Diego Comic Con gathering<\/strong> this past weekend. George Lucas\u2019 surprise appearance <\/strong>and the controversy stirred up by \u201cSouth Park\u2019s\u201d skewering of President Trump<\/strong> were among the talked-about moments from the four-day marathon.<\/p>\n \n\tSchneider himself moderated panels for the upcoming revivals of \u201cKing of the Hill\u201d (for Hulu) <\/strong>and \u201cPhineas and Ferb\u201d (for Disney+).<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThere wasn\u2019t as much significant news out of Comic Con but that didn\u2019t seem to matter to the hardcore fans. The cosplay game was fierce this year, Schneider says.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMy favorite costume \u2014 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,\u201d he says. \u201cWhoever was cosplaying as Milchick did such a fantastic job, down to the balloons with Adam Scott\u2019s face on them. It was brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t(Pictured: \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tListen to Daily Variety<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0on iHeartPodcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify and other podcast platforms.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps\u201d kept up the momentum at the summer box office that has boosted Hollywood\u2019s year-to-date haul at the turnstyles to a more than 10% gain over last year\u2019s strike-disrupted frame. The nuances of \u201cFantastic Four\u2019s\u201d performance in its opening weekend at the box office are discussed on the latest episode of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1922,3516,6498,2872,1547,1008,6499,2020,1167],"class_list":{"0":"post-12834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-box","9":"tag-comic","10":"tag-con","11":"tag-fantastic","12":"tag-good","13":"tag-office","14":"tag-recap","15":"tag-steps","16":"tag-takes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}