Fantastic Four: First Steps Falls Below Even the MCU's Worst on Disney Plus

Marvel’s 2025 skid deepens: The Fantastic Four: First Steps just posted Marvel’s lowest five-day Disney+ debut of the year, despite outgrossing Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts in theaters.

Another rough data point for Marvel: The Fantastic Four: First Steps just posted the weakest five-day Disney+ launch of any recent MCU movie. After a so-so theatrical run, the streaming debut didn’t catch fire either, which keeps Marvel’s 2025 trend line pointed in the wrong direction. And yes, for the record, First Steps actually earned more in theaters than Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts, but that didn’t translate into big streaming heat.

The numbers that tell the story

Using the same five-day Disney+ start metric the industry tracks for MCU movies (MovieViews), here’s where First Steps landed compared to the pack. It’s not pretty:

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - 14.1 million
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - 10.9 million
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - 9.7 million
• Eternals - 9.2 million
• Captain America: Brave New World - 6.4 million
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - 6.1 million
• Thunderbolts* - 5.5 million
• The Marvels - 5.3 million
• Black Widow - 5.1 million
• The Fantastic Four: First Steps - 4.9 million

So what went wrong?

On paper, nothing disastrously broken. First Steps was pitched as the big rejuvenator for the MCU and it got decent reviews. The problem is bigger than one movie. The post-Endgame run has been uneven, and Phase Five hasn’t convinced people otherwise. Outside of Guardians 3 and Deadpool 3, most of the slate landed in the middle of the bell curve. By the time Thunderbolts arrived to glowing notices, a lot of audience goodwill had already evaporated.

There’s also the baggage. The Fantastic Four brand doesn’t exactly have a spotless live-action history, and Marvel banking on this as a reset bet was always risky. The film wasn’t a flop, but the studio clearly expected higher highs than it got.

Is a sequel still in play?

Before release, word was that Marvel had already nodded a sequel into existence. After the box office and now the streaming start, that confidence feels wobbly. That said, there’s chatter that the studio still wants a follow-up, with an eye toward boosting interest after the team shows up in the next two Avengers movies.

"I've heard that Matt Shakman will likely return to direct a sequel, which Marvel execs think will perform better once its First Family appears in the two-part Avengers finale."

Spider-Man 4 and the Avengers two-parter are obvious moneymakers. But outside those event titles, the MCU doesn’t carry the automatic, pre-Endgame shine anymore. First Steps just underlined that.

Bottom line

First Steps is a decent movie that arrived at a tough moment, with a brand the audience is still side-eyeing and a franchise base that needs a genuine win, not just a competent course correction. If Marvel really wants a Fantastic Four sequel, piping them through the Avengers machine first might be the only path that makes sense.

Seen it yet? First Steps is now streaming on Disney+.