Box Office: ‘Fantastic Four’ bombs with $26.2 million weekend

Scathing reviews and an indiscreet tweet left “Fantastic Four” on the slab after the franchise reboot flopped at the weekend box office.

Fox’s hopes of rejuvenating the comicbook characters and turning the super-team into a cinematic juggernaut to rival “X-Men” have flamed out given that the film debuted to a dreadful $26.2 million across 3,995 theaters. With a production budget of $120 million, plus millions more in marketing costs, the film will need to get a boost from foreign crowds if it wants to avoid being a write-off.

The studio was banking on a cast of up-and-coming actors like Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller and a wunderkind director in the form of “Chronicle’s” Josh Trank to push the Human Torch, the Thing, Invisible Woman and Mr. Fantastic into the modern era, but production difficulties may have doomed the project. Trank reportedly exhibited bizarre behavior on set that was so extreme it cost him his gig directing a “Star Wars” spinoff. He seemed to acknowledge those tensions, blaming studio-mandated reshoots for the poor critical notices in a tweet Thursday that he subsequently deleted.