Dark Phoenix's problems are now the stuff of legend. It had the worst opening of the X-Men franchise, by a lot, and it stands to lose around $100 million. Director Simon Kinberg is taking responsibility for the flop, and we can add this new disappointment to the list.
Dark Phoenix just had the lowest second week drop of any superhero movie. It earned $14 million on its opening day last Friday, and $2.348 million on its second Friday. That's a drop of 83.2%, relieving DC's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and its 81% drop for the title. (Finally, some good news for BvS!)
As Forbes noted, Dark Phoenix's 83.2% drop from Friday-to-Friday was just shy of the 84% drop for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II in its second Friday. Of course, one major difference there is fans had already rushed to see the final Harry Potter movie, giving it an opening weekend of $169 million in July 2011. Dark Phoenix only had an opening weekend of $33 million.
On the list of other big movies (as opposed to indies), High School Musical 3 had a 90% drop on its second Friday, but that also happened to be Halloween night.
As of Sunday, Dark Phoenix could potentially see a full second weekend drop of around 74%. That would also be the biggest second weekend drop of any major superhero movie. (It makes Brightburn's 70.5% drop look less bad now, so that's another positive.) Then again, that's projecting from the huge second Friday drop, expecting a weekend tally of only $8.63 million. Box Office Mojo and Box Office Pro were predicting Dark Phoenix to make something around $13 million this weekend.
Dark Phoenix is the final movie in the X-Men series as we know it. Fans are hoping for good things to come in the MCU, but this was Simon Kinberg's chance to take the franchise out with a bang. This latest stab at telling The Dark Phoenix Saga was plagued with production problems, rewrites, and reshoots. But at least Kinberg is content with the final product, telling KCRW he's happy with the movie and had an "amazing time" making it. Also, some fans are defending Dark Phoenix, or at least pointing out that they liked it more than Apocalypse.
It's already been noted that, if Dark Phoenix wants to salvage this run at all, it's most likely to come from the international box office. Going into this weekend, Dark Phoenix has a total worldwide tally of $148.8 million. A full $103.7 million of that has come from the foreign box office.
Stay tuned for CinemaBlend's Sunday box office report for the ultimate weekend numbers. Father's Day 2019 weekend is meant to be a pretty slow one at the box office, despite major new releases like Men In Black International. Even with so many disappointing franchise debuts, this could be the weekend Avengers: Endgame says goodbye to the top 10.
