I think Galactus might have "helped"......but the first movie seemed to be just too big of a hole to crawl out of......they had too far to jump to get a good hold to pull themselves out.....
Well the first movie may have hurt them with the fanboys but they knew what they could do to fix that, as I said who cares about the critics. You had basically the same turnout the first weekend so what explains the fall off.
They are going to end up about 25 million lower on the domestic front.
Where did they lose that 25 million. They lost it in the crucible of this summers heavy hitters siphoning off the BO.
Both Spiderman and Shrek and Evan Almighty pulled from their target.
But If they had opened huge the first week they would have been ok.
A week before the release the internet buzz turned on them and tracking for the movie actually fell 20 million dollars or so according to excel himself.
They were at 55 one week and were increasing like 10 million a week in the last month and got up to like 60. Tracking fell to 40 and they got like 60 million or so at the BO. if they had stayed at 60 maybe they would have got 80.
However the bad negative buzz that they were running from all year hit.
And what was that about, well who would have thunk it, it was the stink surrounding Galactus and the runtime and the fear that the movie was dumbed down. I loved that it was PG but why the shorter than shrek runtime, that is embarrassing.
So they decided to save 10 to 15 million to do Galactus and the film right and now they are going to lose 25 on the domestic front and maybe more elsewhere.
I kept saying Tim Story and Fox ain't crazy they would not mess up Galactus but Ioan was right all along; there was a
presence of Galactus, cause what they showed was crap.
But I guess I am being too hard on them as this film was not about the coming of Galactus but the Silver Surfer. After all he is such a cool character.
Don't they get it that SS is not a villain. So it should have been a two parter cause most people know the SS is not a villain.
They had time to fix all this but no doubt they felt the 40 plus years of history, the hardcore fans who would feed the buzz were irrelevant.
No wonder the unwashed

(the infamous Memflix) dumped on them.
They should have just stuck with Jack and Stan's story.
I gotta get away for a while, I am slipping back into negativity and I have to stay strong, hope for the 130 million and that they can somehow fix this mess with the next movie.