X-Men: Dark Phoenix was not the grand finale to Fox’s X-Men universe that fans were hoping for. It wasn’t even a so-so entry in the franchise that you could take or leave. Simon Kinberg’s second movie adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons, as it was such a box office flop when it arrived last summer. In fact, new figures reveal that it was actually the biggest bomb of 2019.
Deadline has taken a look at the most disastrous films of the year, based on info derived from inside sources, and has labelled Dark Phoenix as 2019’s worst offering. According to the trade, the famously troubled production caused the budget to balloon to over $200 million, with the movie’s final global gross being a mere $252 million, the lowest for any X-Men film by a long shot. Overall, Deadline writes that the studio recorded a net loss of $133 million on the project.
So yes, this means that Dark Phoenix was even more costly a mistake than other infamous misfires of 2019. Paramount’s Terminator: Dark Fate, for instance, was just behind it with its $122 million loss. Then there’s Cats, which danced away $113 million for Universal. This is an ignoble end for the X-Men franchise, then, but hopefully it’ll be remembered for kicking off the modern superhero movie craze back in 2000 and not for falling flat on its face at the final hurdle.
Of course, there is one more Fox-produced X-film ready to go in the form of The New Mutants, which Disney was going to release this April until the coronavirus pandemic put paid to that plan. The spinoff has yet to get a new date, so fans are wondering if the studio’s just going to quietly drop it on Disney Plus at some point and be done with it.
Does X-Men: Dark Phoenix deserve to be the biggest bomb of 2019, though? Share your opinions in the comments below.
