2019 may have seen box office records broken left, right and centre, with Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame overtaking Avatar to become the biggest movie of all time and helping Disney to absolutely annihilate the studio record for the most receipts in a single year.
However, it seems the Mouse House also holds another record from last year – that of the biggest box office bomb, with Deadline reporting that X-Men: Dark Phoenix (a title Disney acquired from the Fox takeover) claimed the unwanted honour with losses of $133 million.
Dark Phoenix grossed just $252 million, the least for any instalment in Fox’s near-twenty year X-Men franchise, which led to Disney blaming the film for the studio’s disappointing earnings in Q3 of 2019.
The X-Men movie wasn’t alone in tanking however, with Terminator: Dark Fate ($122 million loss), Cats ($113 million loss), Gemini Man ($111 million) and Laika’s Golden Globe-winning Missing Link ($101 million) all proving extremely costly for their respective studios.
This is the story of one of the X-Men’s most beloved characters, Jean Grey, as she evolves into the iconic DARK PHOENIX. During a life-threatening rescue mission in space, Jean is hit by a cosmic force that transforms her into one of the most powerful mutants of all. Wrestling with this increasingly unstable power as well as her own personal demons, Jean spirals out of control, tearing the X-Men family apart and threatening to destroy the very fabric of our planet. The film is the most intense and emotional X-Men movie ever made. It is the culmination of 20 years of X-Men movies, as the family of mutants that we’ve come to know and love must face their most devastating enemy yet — one of their own.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix sees Simon Kinberg directing a cast that includes franchise veterans Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Professor X), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler) and Evan Peters (Quicksilver) alongside new additions Kota Eberhardt (The Persian Connection) as Selene, Andrew Stehlin (Hacksaw Ridge) as Red Lotus, and Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game) and Lamar Johnson (Kings).
Via Dark Horizons
