There have been a lot of movies and shows recently have been capper on long arcs of stories. The biggest one being Avengers Endgame, and then, there was the final X-Men movie to be made by Fox (with New Mutants almost literally in limbo…) in the form of Dark Phoenix. But unlike Endgame, which set the box office on literal fire, Dark Phoenix is honestly burning out at the theaters.
The first weekend got around $35 million dollars and was the lowest opening of any X-Men film. And now, in its second weekend, it’s had the biggest drop for any superhero film ever. All of which points to the film not making back what it cost to make, and showing that the delays and reshoots that plagued the film didn’t help it with the audience.
The director of the film, Simon Kinberg, was asked about this, he told The Business. “It clearly is a movie that didn’t connect with audiences that didn’t see it, it didn’t connect enough with audiences that did see it. So that’s on me.”
He did say however that he loved making the film and working with the cast. And he also noted that members of the film community have reached out to him to say they appreciated the film. One of which was the director of the original Deadpool movie, Tim Miller:
“He wrote me an email having empathy for a movie that doesn’t work…[He wrote] people will come to see the movie differently, and out of the context of this particular moment, see things in it they will appreciate and that he appreciated as a fan.”
Of course, everyone now is wanting to see what Marvel Studios will do with the X-Men now that they have control of the franchise as well as the Fantastic Four. Only time will tell if they’re able to fix the mistakes that many felt the original X-Men saga had.
