2019 Box Office Busts

[Theleviathan]

Very true. Just look at the box office for the last 2 Spider-Man movies under Sony solo compared to the Marvel/Sony team. Homecoming made over 150 more even though it was the 3rd reboot of the character in 15 years, and the biggest factor in the is people trust the Marvel name. I really think Far From Home could be the first Spider-Man movie to cross that billion dollar mark at the box office because of the good will Marvel has built up with Spider-Man. I think they can and will do the same with the X-Men.

Agreed, Spidey is the last movie my family and I will be paying for this summer. Movies are simply too expensive to justify going unless the people producing the movie have earned it.

The Lego movies are another good example of what happens when you water down your product with bland or outright bad movies. The first one was an absolutely brilliant movie. The second one was pretty good. In between those was Lego Batman and Ninjago which were underwhelming and awful respectively. That lost people's trust and Lego 2 paid for it.

[Vakanai]

Agreed, Spidey is the last movie my family and I will be paying for this summer. Movies are simply too expensive to justify going unless the people producing the movie have earned it.

The Lego movies are another good example of what happens when you water down your product with bland or outright bad movies. The first one was an absolutely brilliant movie. The second one was pretty good. In between those was Lego Batman and Ninjago which were underwhelming and awful respectively. That lost people's trust and Lego 2 paid for it.

Can't speak for Ninjago, but I thought Lego Batman was pretty excellent. Not first Lego Movie good, but still a damn fine movie.

[Theleviathan]

Can't speak for Ninjago, but I thought Lego Batman was pretty excellent. Not first Lego Movie good, but still a damn fine movie.

Perhaps my expectations were too high, but it underwhelmed me.

[Jokerz79]

Bad production can kill buzz and word of mouth for films which so this had an uphill battle from the gate.

It's hard to judge all the Fox X-Men Box Office numbers to today blockbusters while true they never did Raimi numbers they were still big hits for Fox at the time. The definition of a Blockbuster had changed in the last few years due to the insane amount Studios are now spending on Marketing. Star Trek Beyond made more than most Star Trek films even when adjusted for inflation and it underperformed even First Avenger and Thor (2011) numbers wouldn't be considered big hits today.

Also for many years Fox X-Men had to deal with Tom Rothman who interference really hindered the franchise.

[Divine Spark]

Why? Why waste more good money that they would probably not recover.

This film had a awful production this was like Solo and Justice League level mess not surprising it suffered their fate. Also the merger hurt it many people have moved on now seeing Logan as the proper ending to the Fox X-Men and waiting until they enter the MCU.

Venom also had awful production. The Deadline article even pointed this out:

Dark Phoenix‘s calamity should be compared to the great success of Sony’s Venom. Here’s a movie that had bad reviews (29%) and constant buzz about fights between the pic’s director Ruben Fleischer and star Tom Hardy. Sony made Venom work with a great release date (Oct 5, with the pic posting the month’s best opening of $80.2M), sold the fun and gave audiences a great ride — all the way to $855M worldwide. Sony, led by studio boss Tom Rothman’s eye, willed Venom to its accomplishments. That didn’t happen here with Fox and Dark Phoenix.

Also, successful films like World War Z had awful production. Kinberg even pointed that out in his podcast.

The Hollywood Reporter article I quoted said that people were less of aware of this film’s existence than Rocketman. So it’s unlikely that general audiences were aware of eventual reboot.

[Theleviathan]

We have to examine this , if we look back almost every X-Men film (including the 1st 2 Wolverine films) did between $350-550+ million worldwide. Which isn't Marvel Universe film money as we saw right now. But enough to be successful films to keep making them. Its only Days of Future Past , Deadpool's 2 films and Logan that really tipped that average to be high as we saw.

As one friend posted on FB , the failure of X-Men Origins : Wolverine killed them doing spin-off films outside the main X-Men line. They had plans for Magneto as a solo film and Deadpool. But they got spooked by what happened and pulled back. In the case of Deadpool they only moved once the test footage leaked out and made them do that 1st film.

Fox was too scared to do a wide universe of films spread out til it was too late . FF bombed and then it was too late.

Their vision was always too narrow. As the quality dipped and the movies became barely distinguishable or noteworthy, investment in the franchise diminished.

Logan and Deadpool were noticeable departures driven by their stars. In the hands of the usual producers they choked the life and fun out of it. Expecting the audience to hand their money over to your miserable product is foolish.

They reaped what they have spent more than a decade sowing.

[Colossus1980]

Fox burned their audience bridge with their lackluster series of X-men movies and when juxtaposed to the raucously good time people have with Avengers, it only makes them look worse generally.

DOFP was my favorite X-Men movie and when you had three sets of X-Men in the movie with glowing reviews and it still failed to beat X-Men Last Stand domestically that was a sign of lack of interest to me, NA that is. Dark Phoenix was only going to do worse than Apocalypse since no one cared enough about the characters.

[Colossus1980]

Whilst I get why, realistically that Movies not going to sell better. I dont really know if a movie that's dropped off this badly has ever come back.

It's not coming back and it's a box office bomb.

[Divine Spark]

DOFP was my favorite X-Men movie and when you had three sets of X-Men in the movie with glowing reviews and it still failed to beat X-Men Last Stand domestically that was a sign of lack of interest to me, NA that is. Dark Phoenix was only going to do worse than Apocalypse since no one cared enough about the characters.

I’m pretty sure people cared about First Class they were the stars alongside Jean.

[Gryphon]

People keep forgetting something about godzilla and thats the chinese market. Becase legendary pictures is owned by a chinese company, its technically a chinese made film and thus gets better treatment in china and will get to keep more of the profits than most foregein films.

[skyvolt2000]

I literally I have seen some people say they didn’t know it came out.

https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=...d_query&f=live

Aside from YOutube movie ads and Shadow & Act throwing fits about how blacks got treated by the franchise-I saw NO promotion for this film in my city. Not tv ads nor posters anywhere.

They should have delayed the movie beyond June and that would have given Disney enough time to properly market it.

Why would Disney do that? A franchise that is the anti to all Marvel films.

FF bombed and then it was too late.

FF had issues beyond the control of the cast and crew. Along with the backlash to one person that we would see Cap marvel deal with. Difference is Cap Marvel overcame it.

[Immortal Weapon]

People keep forgetting something about godzilla and thats the chinese market. Becase legendary pictures is owned by a chinese company, its technically a chinese made film and thus gets better treatment in china and will get to keep more of the profits than most foregein films.

I'm more interested how well it does in Japan than China.

[Divine Spark]

Why would Disney do that? A franchise that is the anti to all Marvel films.

Disney was doing all they can with the little time they had to promote this movie. They even had Marvel Entertainment try to help promote the film and created the whole “X-Men day” thing.

[Theleviathan]

DOFP was my favorite X-Men movie and when you had three sets of X-Men in the movie with glowing reviews and it still failed to beat X-Men Last Stand domestically that was a sign of lack of interest to me, NA that is. Dark Phoenix was only going to do worse than Apocalypse since no one cared enough about the characters.

No one really cared about anything they did with the First Class, new wave. All of those movies performed poorly but the one that featured the originals in DoFP.

As much as people might have liked First Class and DoFP (I think FC is highly overrated and DoFP was very entertaining),what they did not do is fit any kind of well thought out plan. And we know why now....there was an internal power struggle about what direction to take the franchise and the better idea (the originals) lost out. What has happened since is a sloppy continuation of a bad plan that DoFP no longer fit into. As good a movie as it was it failed at fitting - it killed virtually everyone from First Class, introduced no one new, was supposed to be some kind of reboot, but ultimately....it wasn't. It doesn't fit. As a stand alone movie it's fine, but as part of a franchise it's part of the problem.

People no longer knew what to expect or appreciate and the money the franchise has brought in since reflects that.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

No one really cared about anything they did with the First Class, new wave. All of those movies performed poorly but the one that featured the originals in DoFP.

As much as people might have liked First Class and DoFP (I think FC is highly overrated and DoFP was very entertaining),what they did not do is fit any kind of well thought out plan. And we know why now....there was an internal power struggle about what direction to take the franchise and the better idea (the originals) lost out. What has happened since is a sloppy continuation of a bad plan that DoFP no longer fit into. As good a movie as it was it failed at fitting - it killed virtually everyone from First Class, introduced no one new, was supposed to be some kind of reboot, but ultimately....it wasn't. It doesn't fit. As a stand alone movie it's fine, but as part of a franchise it's part of the problem.

People no longer knew what to expect or appreciate and the money the franchise has brought in since reflects that.

Given that Apocalypse did not do Days of Future Past numbers...then yes it under performed. But it wasn't a box office bomb. It didn't make the then studio head call it out as he did with Fantastic Four.

Yes Fox made mistakes expanding and building a universe because really they didn't know how til it was too late and 1 films reaction scared them. But as a whole im sure Fox was happy to have the profits the X-Men did for years to keep doing films.

Its like looking at the last Transformers film before Bumblebee where it did badly and proclaiming how bad the studio ran the franchise. I don't even like the films but even i know the studio batted pretty solid money wise with them beyond one that didn't perform well.

Its the same with Fox. Even terrible films like Origins did good at the time box office. And fans came back after it. If Fox was separate they would sit a few years n do a new reboot more than likely. To take another shot.

Because they would admit this one did badly and its time for a full scale reboot . Because they made money for years off it. Marvel will wait n get their chance because they know this 1 bad film will not hurt a money franchise.