Examining Why 'Dark Phoenix' Failed to Rise at the Box Office This Weekend | THR News - video Dailymotion

Elsewhere, Mindy Kaling's 'Late Night' bowed to an impressive per-theater average of $62,414.

Transcript

00:00The Queen of the North herself, Sophie Turner, may be a Game of Thrones fan favorite,

00:12but her latest movie Dark Phoenix failed to rise at the box office this weekend.

00:16The film bombed with only $33 million in stateside ticket sales,

00:20marking the lowest earning debut for an X-Men movie ever.

00:23Dark Phoenix was supposed to be the ultimate X-Men movie,

00:26and was seen as a course corrective after X- Apocalypse was a critical

00:29and fan failure in 2017.

00:32So what happened?

00:33Well, insiders tell The Hollywood Reporter that in a series of post-mortem meetings on Apocalypse,

00:38executives came away thinking that the movie's failure had been due to an excessive amount of explosions and scale,

00:44and not due to franchise fatigue generally.

00:46One Fox insider said,

00:48There was a misguided feeling that Apocalypse was an anomaly, that we just got it wrong.

00:52We were wrong.

00:53When I lose control, bad things happen.

00:55But it feels good.

01:01It's also worth noting that Dark Phoenix kept getting pushed back.

01:04At first, the movie had a release date of November 2, 2018.

01:08With more work and reshoots needed on the film, it was moved to February 14, 2019.

01:13But then Fox pushed the release date again to June 3, 2019.

01:17Insiders tell THR that the move was to please Avatar filmmaker James Cameron.

01:22According to one source, Cameron felt his movie Alita Battle Angel would lose horribly when facing a December opening weekend

01:27that included Aquaman and Bumblebee.

01:29So he wanted his movie shifted.

01:31According to a source, the studio gave Alita the February date and moved Dark Phoenix to June.

01:36The source says Dark Phoenix was not designed to be a summer movie, and it would have been big for off-season,

01:41but was too small for summer.

01:42A former Fox executive told THR this movie just got lost.

01:46For the latest box office news, head to THR.com and be sure to tweet me and let me know what you saw in theaters this weekend.

01:52Until next time, for The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.