‘Fantastic Four’ Pressure, Marvel’s Next Steps, and Kevin Feige’s Future

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

LIVE SHOW in Los Angeles on August 27. Tickets go live today at 10 a.m. PT. ⁠Click here for tickets!Matt is joined by Wall Street Journal entertainment reporter Ben Fritz to discuss how much pressure is on ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ for the next era of the MCU to succeed. They discuss some of the changes Marvel has made to combat superhero fatigue, Kevin Feige’s future, and whether Marvel or DC is better positioned to win the rest of the decade (02:50). Matt finishes the show with an opening weekend box office prediction for ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ (28:52).For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Ben FritzProducers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie LopezTheme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we get to today's show, I'm excited to announce our next live taping of the town,
0:04.8	which will be in Los Angeles on August 27th with me and a very special guest.
0:10.2	We'll be at the L-Ray Theater in L.A. and tickets go on sale today, Wednesday, July 23rd,
0:15.6	at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. More information is available at the ringer.com slash events.
0:21.3	Just click the link in the description
0:22.8	of this episode. Hope to see you there.
0:26.3	It is Wednesday, July 23rd.
0:29.1	I went to the Fantastic 4 premiere
0:30.8	on Monday night. I made producer Jesse come
0:32.8	with me. Craig is officially barred from
0:34.8	superhero premieres now that he openly
0:36.5	roots for them to fail. I would never do that. I thought the movie was fine. I'll leave it to the real critics to give their reviews. It's at 80-something on Rotten Tomatoes. Pretty good. Fans will definitely like it. But what struck me about Fantastic Four from a business perspective is that it's really the first true post-pandemic, post-Hollywood
0:55.0	correction Marvel movie. And by that, I mean, it's a true standalone. You don't have to have
0:59.6	seen the other movies or do any MCU homework to know who's who, what's happening. It doesn't
1:04.7	have any Avengers in it. The dozens of characters that help power Disney to box office heights
1:09.3	that culminated in Avengers
1:10.8	Endgame in 2019 and populated all those Disney Plus shows that Marvel says it's pulling way back
1:16.1	on now.
1:17.0	And it's the first Marvel Studios movie based only on the IP that Disney got in its big acquisition
1:22.2	of Fox.
1:23.2	Even Deadpool and Wolverine last summer had some MCU people show up.
1:27.0	This is just the Fantastic Four.
	...

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