We already know from the Thunderbolts post credit scene that the F4 are going to coming into the 616 by the beginning of Doomsday, since it was more or less a scene from Doomsday.Tough situation for the Gunn film. If the FF has any advantage, its the fact its finally the MCU version of the concept, and with that, there might be certain expectations regarding the team eventually mainlined into upcoming films (or, that's what some are suspecting, despite Feige complaining about that kind of format for MCU movies).
Exactly; its quite laughable for anyone to claim there's "consumer confidence" with Cap4 or Thunderbolts, when the actual profit beyond the investment is considered. Both films underperformed to a great degree, which is part of the recent MCU trend of major flops. This places a great deal of pressure on the FF to be the "transplant" necessary for the MCU to move forward.
I can't believe I'm actually agreeing with @TREK_GOD_1 when it comes to the MCU, but Brave New World definitely underperformed and might even qualify as a flop, Thunderbolts did better, but I'm not sure if it did well enough to get out of the underperfomer category and might be just on the border of being another flop. And there was no "smear campaign" against either of them, Brave New World just didn't get a great reaction, but Thunderbolts on the other hand seemed to be a pretty positive reaction from what I've seen.Neither of them "underperformed", considering the huge smear campaign against both films. Neither flopped either, in fact there is no "Recent MCU trend" of major flops. You've simply jumped on the hater bandwagon
I think at this point we MCU fans might just have to accept that the MCU definitely is on a pretty big downward trend right now. There does seem to be a fair amount of enthusiasm for F4, but only time will tell what that means for the movie when it comes out.