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Fantastic Box Office

I was pleased to see that Fantastic Four did so well this weekend. I'd avoided reviews in general, but apparently the reviewers weren't especially kind, and so the studio expectation going into the weekend was much lower than the $56 million it ended up doing, and managed to reverse a downward trend for box office receipts versus the same time last year.

Michael Chiklis must be in an odd place with this news. On the one hand it's always great to be integrally connected to a come-from-behind success story, and he's a long time fan of the characters the movie was based on, but on the other hand he had profound problems with the heavy, latext suit and appliances necessary to turn him into The Thing. The problem was so intense that by the second day of shooting he had to start seeing a therapist just to get him through the psychological ordeal. He clamed that he was okay while the cameras were rolling and he was actually playing the role, but the rest of the time he was in a terrible place. (I caught those comments during an episode of Dinner For Five a couple months ago, which was also mentioned here.)

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