One of the biggest box office bombs of the summer, or probably the entire year, is Fox’s “Dark Phoenix.” The ‘X-Men’ franchise swansong debuted in June to the worst opening in franchise history and since then has plummeted off the face of the Earth. In fact, in its fifth weekend (that just ended yesterday), “Dark Phoenix” earned a paltry $439,000. But as we come to the end of the run for the film, it’s starting to look like “Dark Phoenix” is an even bigger bomb than previously thought.
You see, after this weekend, “Dark Phoenix” has earned a total domestic cume of only $64.6 million. The global gross is equally as troubling with only a $249 million total. While it’s likely that the film will earn more than $250 million when it’s all said and done, the Fox film won’t do much more than that. And barring some sort of miracle, that will make “Dark Phoenix” an even bigger bomb than the current low bar set by Fox’s “Fantastic Four” reboot in 2015.
The math works out this way (via Forbes): with a $250 million total, “Dark Phoenix” will have only grossed 1.25x its budget (a reported $200 million). On the other hand, “Fantastic Four” earned 1.39x its budget of $120 million with a box office gross of only $167 million. So you see, apples to apples, director Simon Kinberg’s film is actually even more embarrassing than Josh Trank’s debacle.
As for where the last Fox ‘X-Men’ film will likely end up on the list for biggest superhero film domestic grosses, the film currently stands at #84, just above “Chronicle” and “Sky High.” Seemingly out of its reach are “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” and 1998’s “Blade.” That’s just abysmal.
Of course, the ‘X-Men’ franchise is now under the control of Marvel Studios and Disney, so it’s likely that we’ll get a fresh reboot sometime in the future. But you have to wonder how much damage to the brand was done by “Dark Phoenix?” We’ll find out soon enough.