DARK PHOENIX Quietly Ends Theatrical Run As Lowest Grossing X-MEN Movie Of All-Time

Disney purposely let it flop. They decided not to market the film anywhere in the world and fired the fox marketing team. They let it sink so they can blame it all on Fox and fire the rest of the remaining staff. They blamed it all on fox during the investor meeting even though any business insider knew Disney's stocks fell because their Star Wars theme park was a failure.

@Jeight8 -
Mastakilla39 is completely 100% correct though.

"Most people agree that the movie's marketing after the merging was better."

Yes, i am sure trying to mirror X-Men The Last Stand was totally done to try and get people to watch it... lol xD

Put bluntly, Disney were not the ones who overspent, Fox was. A lot of the decisions made left Disney to clear up the mess. Now, in Disney's shoes... what would you do? You have a movie for a franchise you have no interest in that you know would be best to end on a weak note to prevent people being sad its over.

Disney as such decided to use this as an advantage - let the movie be the lowest performing, worst recieved, barely viewed X-Men movie possible. Let the last memories of the X-Men in people's minds be a 'Fant4stic level' - then whatever they do in the future will be better by comparison and face less resistance by fans.

If X-Men Dark Phoenix had been an average or good movie, people would still think 'what if Fox had been able to continue and make another movie, maybe it would have been as good as Logan' instead Disney sabotaged the very idea of X-Men in order to make the transition to the next version easier.

They did the EXACT SAME THING with Spider-man. Spider-man in cartoons used to be an independent hero. The second Disney started pushing for control, they started to portray Spider-man as a whiny child who is constantly inferior to the Avengers. This even occurs in Homecoming in order to make you think of Spider-man as 'nothing without the Avengers' (E.g. Spider-man is nothing if he's not part of the MCU)

In addition, disney then blame the decreased profit margin on the failure of a film largely produced by Fox which had a notable disasterous production and extensive reshoots - as opposed to money spent towards the massive Star Wars theme park they just made which has been a critical, commercial and financial disaster demonstrating the declining interest in Star Wars.

To investors, Star Wars still has potential with 'Solo' being a product of poor marketting plus Disney has to keep up the illusion that Episode 9 has a lot of fan interest. Disney in theory can salvage Episode 9, but only if they keep pretending everything is fine on the surface while doing changes beneath.

@Scarilian - Thanks for the additional info, glad to know someone else sees the full picture too. Dark Phoenix had the potential to do way more regardless of critical reviews. Even films like Dave Bautista's Stuber had no support from Disney because it was a r-rated raunchy comedy. Taika Waititi's JoJo Rabbit is already in danger of failing at the box office because Disney execs believe it will alienate their loyal Disney fans despite the critical praise it is receiving at festival circuits.

This always happens during any corporate merger. Disney bought Fox knowing full well its risk and are not upholding their end of their bargain for stronger marketing. They are letting all these Fox films flop because it wasn't a slate they created. Disney is just trying to take over the rest of Fox from the inside and make all their IPs more formulaic similar to what they did with lucas arts, pixar, & marvel, etc. It's a shame as Fox Searchlight won Best Picture in 2017 with Shape of Water. Doubt any films like this is ever going to be made again under Disney's corporate takeover.

@Jeight8 - Are you [frick]ing kidding me? The marketing was terrible for Dark Phoenix. All Disney did was cut a more action packed trailer any work beyond that was terrible.

Disney overspends on terrible films all the time. Lets not forget a wrinkle in time, nutcracker and the 4 realms, lone ranger, etc. Yet those films still had massive marketing and promotion even though they are worst than Dark Phoenix. They even let those films run longer in theater and re-released them in drive-in theaters and double features just to avoid the embarrassment.

@mastakilla39 -
Yeah, Galaxies Edge has been a flop.

@Battabing - your passive-aggressive troll comment with Disney's dark Phoenix it's just stupid grow up nitwit

OT-ish but they played the trailer for the new James Mangold film before OUATIH and that shit looks goooooooood

@KWilly - idk, I prefer how Logan's arc wrapped up in his eponymous film. Using the character as an exploration of the consequences of living a life of violence felt pretty on-brand, and also had some of the best acting I've ever seen in one of these films between him and Stewart.

@Jeight8 - The movie treats the team like trash.

To be fair, First Class was pretty much the only one that doesn't treat the team entirely as trash.

@Jeight8 - It's a perfect ending to the X-Men film series, which, for better or worse, was the story of Logan, Charles & Erik. From that perspective, it was a narratively satisfying conclusion that made sense for two of those characters. Old Magneto's arc kind of came to a close in DOFP, so I don't begrudge Logan too much for leaving that out of the film.

@tmp3 - It's not better or worse. It's worse. The films were called X-men, not Wolverine. The movie treated the team like trash and brushed them off. It's one of my few gripes with an otherwise great film.

Dont try to sugarcoat it. The fact we dont even [frick]ING KNOW who died is disrespectful to Scott, ororo, Kurt, Hank, Jean, Warren or whoever else was in that mansion.

@KingCipher - I don't want to assume. If Endgame ended with the Avengers dying off-screen how would you feel?

@Jeight8 - Same with Marvel Netflix shows. They make fun of comics costumes. Those who make fun of comics shouldn't be hired for any cb related stuffs.

@Jeight8 - I'm not saying it was an amazing, oscar worthy movie. Personally, I enjoyed it. I was saying that it being the lowest grossing was a shame because others in the franchise were way worse. Xmen Origins and The Last Stand were, by far, the worst films of the franchise. It wasn't the quality of this movie that hurt it. It was the fact that people just didn't care about the franchise anymore, since the property was going to Disney anyway.

@Jeight8 - not sure if you can read or not but he never said it wasn’t bad, he said it wasn’t the worst. The [frick] are you on about?

@ThorArms - How is that a difficult feat?