With not much to talk about when discussing this year’s box office (January’s “Bad Boys for Life” is still the #1 film of the year), it’s time to look back at the year prior. Now that the dust has settled and studios are able to count all their receipts and see which films did the best and the worst in 2019. And according to tallies from Deadline, it appears that Fox’s ‘X-Men’ film, “Dark Phoenix” holds the distinction of being the biggest bomb of 2019.
The report took into account the money earned from ticket sales, VOD and Blu-ray sales, and TV revenue to calculate the list of films that lost their respective studios the most money. In the case of “Dark Phoenix,” with a box office tally of $252 million (the studio only received $100 million in revenue after theaters took their share), along with secondary revenues from Blu-rays, VOD, and TV accounting for $110 million, Fox earned a total of $210 million off its ‘X-Men’ swansong.
Unfortunately, the studio spent way more than that to get the film released.
After spending $200 million on the budget, along with millions more on advertising, prints, residuals, and other miscellaneous expenses, “Dark Phoenix” cost Fox $343 million to produce and release. That means the Simon Kinberg-directed film lost the studio roughly $133 million at the end of the day. Ouch.
And despite films such as “Cats” and “Terminator: Dark Fate” also doing terribly, with the former being the laughing stock of 2019 and the latter being yet another disappointing sequel, “Dark Phoenix” easily lost more money.
The report claims that “Terminator: Dark Fate” is the second-biggest loser, with a loss of $122.6 million. “Cats” came in at #3 on the list, losing $113.6 million for Universal after what was clearly one of the biggest botched releases of the year.
But it’s “Dark Phoenix” that rules the roost this time. Albeit, not necessarily topping a list that is worth bragging about. No wonder Marvel Studios is taking its time to figure out what to do with the characters now.