Box office report: Fantastic Four, The Gift, Ricki and the Flash

After days of scathing reviews and critical tweets from its own director, Fantastic Four fell apart at the box office.

While early predictions had the superhero reboot debuting somewhere in the low to mid $40 million range, Fantastic Four ended the weekend with an estimated $26.2 million. The rough start puts Fantastic Four on the low end for superhero movies (Trank’s low budget 2012 film Chronicle earned $22 million during its debut frame, by comparison). Worse, the total is less than half of what the previous two Fantastic Four films opened to: The original debuted to $56.1 million in 2005, and Rise of the Silver Surfer opened to $58.1 million in 2007.

More bad news: Fantastic Four (which had a budget of $120 million and earned a C-minus CinemaScore) didn’t even manage to secure first place this weekend. Instead, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, which made $29.4 million in its second weekend, took top honors. Tom Cruise’s latest outing as Ethan Hunt crossed $100 million on Sunday, bringing its domestic total to $108.7 million after just 10 days of release.

But even as Fantastic Four fell flat, another debut outpaced expectations this weekend: The Gift, starring and directed by Joel Edgerton, placed third with an estimated $12 million. The thriller, which cost $5 million to make, is the first big release for STX Entertainment, and The Gift is the result of a partnership between STX and Blumhouse Productions (which is known for its low-budget horror flicks).

This weekend’s two other debuts, Meryl Streep’s Ricki and the Flash and the Claymation Shaun the Sheep Movie, failed to crack the top five. Ricki made an estimated $7 million, and the family drama only debuted in about 1,600 theaters, placing seventh. That’s one of the lowest debuts for a film starring Streep, but Ricki will expand to more than 2,000 theaters next weekend. The animated Shaun the Sheep Movie took in an estimated $4 million for the weekend, bringing its five-day total to $5.6 million.

After a lackluster debut last weekend, Vacation held up better than expected and snagged fourth place with $9.2 million. Ant-Man rounded out the top five in its fourth weekend, earning $7.8 million.

Here are this weekend’s top five at the box office:

1. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation — $29.4 million

2. Fantastic Four — $26.2 million

3. The Gift — $12 million

4. Vacation — $9.2 million

5. Ant-Man — $7.8 million

• Why did Fantastic Four director Josh Trank slam his own movie?

• A serious attempt to understand what the new Fantastic Four movie was supposed to be

• Joel Edgerton on wondering if directing and starring in The Gift was an ‘ego issue’