X-Men: Dark Phoenix Shaping Up to Be Box Office Disaster

Click here to check out our X-Men: Dark Phoenix review.

To nobody’s surprise, X-Men: Dark Phoenix is shaping up to be a complete box office failure. The X-Men franchise has produced some of the best comic book movies to date. Logan, Days of Future Past, X2: X-Men United, Deadpool and Deadpool 2. However, the overall inconsistent franchise both in terms of quality and in-story continuity has made it a very difficult film series to get invested in. For every Logan, we have an X-Men Origins: Wolverine. For every Days of Future Past, we have an Apocalypse. And don’t even get me started on the jumbled up, pretty much nonsensical timelines that have been on display.

All of this, mixed with the fact that the Disney-Fox acquisition is done and the X-Men (along with Fantastic Four and Deadpool) are all heading back home to Disney/Marvel Studios, has caused the fanfare surrounding Dark Phoenix to be virtually nonexistent. I haven’t spoken to a single person who’s genuinely excited to see this movie. And that’s reflected in the film’s opening weekend box office results.

Zooming in on the North American box office, Dark Phoenix raked in an embarrassing $US 33 million opening weekend — the worst in the franchise’s 20-year history. Only three X-Men movies have grossed over $US 100 million in their opening weekends, namely Deadpool ($US 132 million), Deadpool 2 ($US 125 million) and The Last Stand ($US 102 million). Prior to this, The Wolverine had the lowest North American opening weekend of the franchise at $US 53 million, which is still $US 20 million more than Dark Phoenix.

However, the second telling of the ‘Jean Grey went bad’ story is doing slightly better if we look at the global market (US + outside US). Dark Phoenix grossed around $US 107 million outside of the US, putting its worldwide opening weekend gross at $US 140 million. Its opening weekend is ranked 9th out of 11 X-Men movies that have come out so far, only beating The Wolverine ($US 139 million) and X-Men: First Class ($US 116 million).

The opening weekend ranking is as follows:

1. Deadpool 2 ($US 300 million)
2. Deadpool ($US 264 million)
3. Days of Future Past ($US 262 million)
4. Logan ($US 247 million)
5. The Last Stand ($US 179 million)
6. Apocalypse ($US 166 million)
7. Origins ($US 158 million)
8. X2 ($US 154 million)
9. Dark Phoenix ($US 140 million)
10. The Wolverine ($US 139 million)
11. First Class ($US 116 million)

To really put things into perspective, though, even Fifty Shades Darker amassed more money globally opening weekend — $US 144 million — than Dark Phoenix.

(Source: Box Office Mojo)

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