Dark Phoenix was a box office bust for Marvel's X-Men. Well all know that. I'm not a fan of piling on, but since Fox/Marvel's Fantastic Four faced plenty of schadenfreude when it flopped in 2015, it's worth pointing out that Dark Phoenix pulled its own "hold my beer" response.
This weekend's box office is all about Spider-Man: Far From Home, with some eyes on Avengers: Endgame's worldwide take versus Avatar, and curiosity about Midsommar, Toy Story 4 in its second weekend, etc.
Dark Phoenix, on the other hand, is getting close to ending its run. It played this weekend in 426 domestic theaters, and it'll soon be squeezed out. Since Dark Phoenix's overseas release is also winding down, the superhero movie is expected to end its run with just over $250 million worldwide.
That may sound like a big enough number, and it would be for most films. But with a reported budget of $200 million, it's not good. As Forbes put it, by earning less than 1.39 times its budget, Dark Phoenix is set to be a bigger box office bomb than even the ill-fated Fantastic Four, which made $167.9 million off a reported $120 million budget in 2015.
Like Fantastic Four, Dark Phoenix made most of its money at the international box office. That's pretty standard for major movies these days. Fantastic Four made $56.1 million at the domestic box office, per Box Office Mojo, and $111.8 million at the foreign markets.
Dark Phoenix has larger numbers overall, but -- again -- it cost a lot more, so it's more of a loss. Dark Phoenix has made just under $65 million at the domestic box office, and about $182 million overseas so far, for a current total around $246 million. It's not completely out of theaters yet, so it still has some money left to be made, but it's not going to be much.
Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg has taken responsibility for the movie's failure. The X-Men movie had plenty of problems along the way, and ended up reshooting the entire ending. But fans have been relatively kind, giving it a 64% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (vs. a 23% from critics) and a B- CinemaScore from polled moviegoers.
Fantastic Four, on the other hand, got a C- CinemaScore, an 18% audience score, and a truly sad 9% rating from critics.
So by that metric, Fantastic Four is still the bigger bomb.
Fantastic Four had a lot of behind-the-scenes drama, with director Josh Trank's behavior blamed for a lot of it, but he criticized the final cut of the movie as not what he intended. He recently joked about the flop, when someone argued that no superhero movie fails, and continued to take shots at his movie.
Sometimes even superhero movies don't work out. It happens. Keep up with everything that's still headed to theaters in busy 2019 with our movie release schedule.
