X-Men: Dark Phoenix Failed Because of Disney

Disney's lack of faith and interest in 'Dark Phoenix' after the Fox Merger is key to why it "failed" at the box office

Sophie Turner in 'X:Men - Dark Phoenix' (CREDIT: Twentieth Century Fox)

by Jack Linsdell

Back in June after X:Men Dark Phoenix faced outcry from the industry after bombing with a mere North American debut of $33 million and a global debut of $140 million, I wrote a very defensive and optimistic article in support of the film. I wrongly predicted the (reportedly) $200 million Simon Kinberg-directed series finale would leg it out a little and recover to $430 million (and just about break even). However, this did not happen and the film ended with a really poor and disappointing $252 million worldwide total, especially considering it's alleged $200 million production budget. Okay, it's an abysmal box office cume for a big budget tentpole, especially a series finale to one of the biggest cinematic film series ever created. 

But, at the time, I argued several reasons why the movie's disappointing cume was not the fault of the actual movie itself to a large degree. Firstly, although popular, the X-Men brand is far less popular in our commercial environment than Marvel and even DC superhero flicks. Heck, even a brand like Men in Black which was incredibly popular back in the 1990s/2000s, struggled with it's modern day remake this year, as Men in Black: International's $250 million cume on a $110 million budget was a massive downturn from the $440-620 million totals of the original trilogy. Furthermore, Dark Phoenix was the direct sequel to X:Men Apocalypse which was largely regarded by general audiences as one of the worst films in the series. History shows that sequels to poor movies always suffer, even though they are (often) of much superior quality. Yes, even Dark Phoenix's worst reviews said it was an improvement on it's predecessor. Okay, I'm in the minority that enjoyed Dark Phoenix and I appreciated it's stylish and more real world take on a blockbuster superhero epic. But, I digress. So, already the brand's popularity and the damage done by it's predesccors already spelled danger. 

But, I think the factor every critic missed was that general audiences had been exhausted by superhero flicks in 2019 before Dark Phoenix was released. Marvel's Captain Marvel gave audience's a strong-female superhero story to the tune of $1.228 billion worldwide, whilst Marvel's Avengers Endgame became the biggest ever film globally to the tune of $2.795 billion, giving audiences the team up superhero flick. So, Dark Phoenix was both a superhero flick about a strong female hero (Jean Grey) and a team up flick (X-Men), meaning that general audiences had been fulfilled with both already. If Dark Phoenix had kept it's original release date it would have come out before both films and thus caught a greater level of audience demand. 

So, this brings us to yesterday's news that Disney ignored Dark Phoenix after it took over Twentieth Century Fox and fired the movie's marketing team. Disney CEO Bob Iger claimed that the movie was the sole reason why Fox lost $170 million last year and as a result has completely overhauled Fox's slate of movies for the next year. Okay, if Fox continued to annually experience this type of drop then it would be a problem for Disney. But I fail to see how the biggest movie production/distribution company in Hollywood, who'll be celebrating over $10 billion worth of profit this year from their biggest movies alone is in any sort of financial insecurity after Fox's mere (in comparison to what Disney have been earning) downturn this year. But, the report was most revealing that Disney deliberately cut $50 million from the marketing and development and didn't internally support the movie either. When your studio/financial backer has no faith in your movie, how can you expect audiences to show up and care either? It apparently fired the marketing team familiar with the movie and was reluctant to actually promote it in any such way that meant spending money. Maybe, had Disney had more faith in Dark Phoenix and invested in a marketing campaign that told general audiences why they needed to see the movie in theatres and why it was different from the two Marvel releases earlier that year, maybe we would be looking at a slightly different outcome. 

Maybe, Disney didn't care because they were always planning on rebooting the X:Men property into their highly successful Marvel Cinematic Universe and such caused (or failed to prevent) the existing series finale for this specific continuity of characters from bombing at the box office. It's lack of support fed into the general public, who knew that the property was being rebooted anyway, making Dark Phoenix a redundant movie. And, this feeds into the news that Disney is only using the Fox merger as a way of increasing their market share, getting a foothold on Oscar nominations and exploiting IP like Kingsman and Planet of the Apes. It's concerning and only helps present Disney as a financially greedy force in the movie industry, whose dominance and desire for domination is putting everything else in it's way onto the sidewalk. 

Okay, Dark Phoenix may not be as satisfying to hardcore fans as it was to me, and maybe some general audiences were put off by the bad reviews or the darker, more realistic tone and narrative. Yes, that's the movie's fault. But, I fail to see how Disney's responsibility (or lack of responsibility) for the movie's marketing and financial backing isn't a much bigger reason why the film bombed. Added to that, it was coming off a previous instalment loathed by fans and the general public and at a time when audience's were exhausted/fulfilled with their superhero movies which also played a big part. So, really Dark Phoenix was always doomed to financial failure and it's mishandling by Disney is a big concern to everything coming from Fox in the future.