X-Men: Dark Phoenix hasn’t had a good time of it. The final film in 20th Century Fox’s X-Men continuity has suffered poor reviews and a disappointing box office return. Yet, more misfortune continues to befall it.
According to the Twitter account for Exhibitor Relations, X-Men: Dark Phoenix will lose a staggering 1,667 cinemas in only its third week of release. Check out the sobering tweet below:
Fire extinguished. X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX will lose 1,667 theaters (-44%) in just its 3rd week of release.
— Exhibitor Relations Co. (@ERCboxoffice) June 20, 2019
This news follows the film’s lackluster box office results, making a worldwide total of $233 million on a $200 million budget. Meanwhile, critics derided what they perceived to be a bad plot and poor character development, despite impressive performances and Han Zimmer’s score.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix scored a 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus stating, “Dark Phoenix ends an era of the X-Men franchise by taking a second stab at adapting a classic comics arc – with deeply disappointing results”. This, of course, references X-Men: The Last Stand, which was Fox’s first attempt at retelling the famous Dark Phoenix arc in movie form. That film, directed by Brett Rattner, was considered the poorest of the first X-Men film trilogy, although it was received better than this one.
There could be many reasons for the failure of Dark Phoenix. One could be the rewrites and reshoots that took place for the film. It’s clear from interviews that writer and director Simon Kinsberg was passionate about the project, even taking a whole year of pre-production (unusual for a Hollywood movie) to ensure the “nuance” of the visual effects. However, he and his team were forced to rewrite the film and its potentially more cosmic angle to erase comparisons with Captain Marvel, released earlier this year. Heck, even the Skrull, who play an important role in the aforementioned film, was intended to be in Dark Phoenix.
However, the release of Marvel’s hit movie meant the creative team had to rewrite the film and its ending. And so, we will never know how their original vision would have turned out on screen.
What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the comments below!
