Dark Phoenix: X-Men film starring Sophie Turner expected to lose studio $100-$120 million
The blockbuster cost $200 million to produce but took just $14 million in the United States on Friday
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Your support makes all the difference.Dark Phoenix has collapsed at the box office, with the latest instalment in the X-Men series expected to lose between $100 million to $120 million.
Following reshoots, the Sophie Turner-led film – co-starring Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender – cost a reported $200 million to produce, not including marketing costs.
Dark Phoenix opened on Friday (7 June) to $14 million in the United States and took just $33 million across the weekend. Outside of the States, the X-Men sequel made $140 million.
The previous worst opening for an X-Men film in the United States was The Wolverine, which took $53 million in 2013, closely followed by X-Men: First Class, at $55 million in 2011. Dark Phoenix more closely matches Fantastic Four. Directed by Josh Trank, the superhero team-up was a flop, opening to $25.7 million in the US and losing 20th Century Fox an estimated $80 million.
According to Deadline, Dark Phoenix is expected to lose between $100 million to $120 million when all costs are added up. Fox fronted the bill for Dark Phoenix, with the film having been shot two summers ago – way before Disney purchased the studio. Disney is expected to reboot the franchise within their own Marvel Cinematic Universe in the future.
Reviews for Dark Phoenix have been widely negative, scoring just 22 per cent on aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. The film’s Cinemascore was also a franchise low at B minus.
The Independent’s critic wrote of Dark Phoenix: “The latest X-Men film risks short-circuiting thanks to its own overabundance of special effects.
“The many scenes of characters being consumed by fireballs or crumbling to dust or being hurled backwards by the lightning-like force in the X-Men’s fingertips become increasingly dreary.
“This is a young adult drama as much as it is a sci-fi film but doesn’t have anything very fresh to say about the trauma of adolescence as experienced by mutant superheroes.”
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