Box Office: 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix' Bombs With Disasterous $14 Million Friday - Forbes

Jennifer Lawrence and Sophie Turner in 'Dark Phoenix'
20th Century Fox

19 years ago, X-Men kick-started (with a little help from Spawn and Blade) the modern comic book superhero movie boom with a $20 million opening day. Last night, Dark Phoenix ended the franchise with a whimper, earning just $14 million on its first day. That translates into an $8 million opening day in ticket prices the day Bryan Singer's X-Men opened in theaters.

Generally speaking, a movie scoring $14 million on a single day wouldn't exactly be a disaster in the making. But when you're dealing with a poorly-reviewed franchise title whose initial installment opened with $20 million 19 years ago sans any 3-D or IMAX boost, yeah, that's a loss. Dark Phoenix scored the lowest opening day for an X-Men movie in franchise history, yes even lower than the (unfairly derided at the time) $20 million Friday for The Wolverine.

Barring a miracle, this is going to open below The Wolverine ($53 million in 2013), X-Men ($54 million in 2000) and X-Men: First Class ($55 million in 2011) to nab the lowest Fri-Sun debut in X-Men history. I don't care that it isn't the top movie of the day or the weekend. The Secret Life of Pets 2 (which didn't exactly hit pay dirt last night either) was always going to win the weekend. But the numbers at play are tragic.

What we're seeing is not a somewhat disappointing series finale for the 19-year-old (and never outright rebooted) X-Men series but a performance relatively on par with Fantastic Four back in 2015. If you recall, Fantastic Four was projected to open with $40 million in August of 2015. But poor "this movie is bad and not fun for your or for your kids" reviews, an overestimation of the public's appetite for the Fantastic Four brand and director Josh Trank infamously trashing the compromised theatrical cut on Twitter just before opening day, led to a $25.7 million launch.

Tracking is not an exact science, but that was a 36% difference. And yes, 65% of Dark Phoenix's projected $50 million launch would indeed be $32 million, which is close to where this one might end up on Sunday. That a fabled and groundbreaking franchise would end this way is not a little heartbreaking, even if many of the mistakes made were by their own hands.

A 2.5x multiplier from a $14 million opening day would be $35 million for the weekend, which would be around $21 million back in 2000 (on par with The Patriot and Scary Movie 2). Once again, poor reviews and an overestimation in the brand sans its popular character/actor combos (Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Patrick Stewart as Professor X, etc.) are to blame. The lack of butts in the seats movie stars (save for Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain in comparatively small roles) didn't help either.

The other factor, which I've been warning about for years, is the choice to redo a comic book arc that had already been done in movie form. Hardcore fans may have wanted a second go at the Phoenix Saga, but general audiences already saw that play out in X-Men: The Last Stand, which sold more tickets domestically ($235 million in 2006 in 2-D) than any X-Men movie save for Deadpool.

It didn't help that everyone knew that the franchise was going to be rebooted into the MCU after Disney's purchase of Fox. To be fair, had the movie been better/better received or offered something new, that would have been mere trivia (or a factor in its favor). Logan would have still thrived under the shadow of such news.

Folks didn't show up for Dark Phoenix because they didn't want to see Dark Phoenix and the mere prospect of "Oh, another X-Men movie" with this cast/continuity wasn't itself an event. Comparatively speaking, audiences didn't think it looked good and the reviews confirmed that it wasn't very good. The X-Men as a brand is much less of a big deal than when it was in the early days when it was among the only games in town.

We can do long-term projections tomorrow. It may find some salvation overseas, but it's not doing scorched Earth numbers in China or anywhere else. And reshoots allegedly sent the budget soaring over/under $200 million, so this isn't like The Wolverine which could be a solid hit at $412 million on a $120 million budget.

X-Men movies, even the generally good ones, aren't very leggy. We're probably looking at a best-case-scenario of $97 million domestic and a doomsday scenario of around $73 million. With a continual focus on the Xavier v Magneto: Dawn Of Ideologies stories at the expense of every other narrative (or character-specific) avenue, the franchise about evolution refused to evolve. Barring a fluke, it died yesterday.

Let's block ads! (Why?)