If the weekly box office could be the subject of a film, it would be quite a cliffhanger: surprises, setbacks, comebacks, and unpredictable endings. It’s happened once again in these past few days, when the movie to beat was supposed to be Fantastic Four. There was the Marvel factory behind. The previous two installments of the franchise opened with $56 and $58 million. It was about superheroes. All the right ingredients were there and the expectations were in the $40 to $50 million range. But the Fox production, starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell, ended with one of the lowest openings of all time for this kind of movie: just $26.2 million.
These days you can always make up losses overseas, but the news from the 43 markets where Fantastic Four opened are almost as bad: a disappointing $34 million, for a global $60 million and with Mexico once again, the standout market with over $5 million.
 
What happened? There were rumors of many re-shoots, often a bad sign. The film scored pretty low. The reviews were extremely negative. And then there was the controversy generated by Josh Trunk, the film’s director, with his tweet distancing himself from the final version of the film and claiming that his original take on the project was better. The tweet was later deleted, but it did not help. Now the issue is whether the sequel, planned for the summer of 2017, will still proceed.
 
Conversely Tom Cruise was finished, right? A symbol of the new times when audiences apparently had lost interest in him and in superstars in general. Well, there was a big surprise here as well, as Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation ended as number one for the second week in a row, domestically and overseas. In North America, the Paramount franchise earned almost $30 million, for a domestic total of $108 million. The other 58 territories generated an extra $65.5 million, for a global so far of $265 million. Things went particularly well in Russia and in India, two new markets. Next in the domestic market was The Gift, a well-reviewed psychological thriller written and directed by actor Joel Edgerton, and produced by Jason Blum’s factory of low budget hits. Then came several holdovers. In fourth position was Vacation that added $9 million on its second weekend for a new domestic total of $37 million. In fifth was Ant-Man, which added $7 million on its fourth weekend for a domestic total of $147 million. The Paul Rudd film crossed the $300 million worldwide, with Japan and China still to come.
Also Minions crossed the $300 million mark, domestically. Worldwide the Despicable Me spinoff crossed the $900 million and with major markets such as Italy and Turkey to open soon it may reach the $1 billion mark before it travels to China in September.
Talking about the Middle Kingdom, local production Monster Hunt generated as of Sunday $328 million. The animated feature passed Transformers 4, and if it keeps rounding up records it could overcome Furious 7 to gain the title of China’s box office champion of
all times.
 
Back to the domestic market, there were some other new films. Ricki and the Flash, with Meryl Streep as an aging rocker forced to confront a family crisis, generated a modest $7 million, with an audience 70% female. Shaun the Sheep, an animation spinoff of the British TV series, placed in 11th position with a five-day total of $5.6 million.
 
So, Tom Cruise is still king but it may last only for a few more days. Next week we will see the debut of the adaptation of the 1960s TV series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. , with Guy Ritchie directing and starring Henry Cavill, Alicia Vikander and Armie Hammer; and the opening of Straight Outta Compton, the story of the rise and fall of the iconic rap group N.W.A. 
Lorenzo Soria