It's merciful for the movie itself and for the theaters that have to show it.
Theaters make agreements with the distributors which lay out the percentages each will get and a guaranteed number of weeks played. During that agreement phase they would have to agree on what happens if a movie tanks and how bad before they can back out on the guaranteed number of weeks. I am sure Fox negotiated with the theaters as if this was going to be a blockbuster. That means the theaters received a relatively small percentage in the first few weeks and more as time goes on. This movie had a pitiful opening weekend and had a staggering drop it's second week. My guess is that this is less of a decision by Fox Studios (a Disney brand) and more a decision by the theaters to play movies that will actually make them money.
conceptual art Dark Phoenix 1 version/ Captain Marvel
Your favorite superhero- the one you visit these forums to talk about. Would they talk to others the way you do on this message board?
This all sounds very bizzare. Dark Phoenix was heavily advertised in Ireland. Well in advance, it was hard not to see an advertisement for it. Was it the US marketing team that got fired then?
They actually did build it up a bit in Apocalypse. It established Jean’s fear of losing control and hurting someone, which makes you understand why Xavier wiped the memory of her of her accidentally killing her mother. It also establishes Xavier having utterly and complete faith in her eventual controlling her powers.
Apocalypse has many problems but it does help give this film a bit of weight.
Very much agree.
Just came back from seeing it 2nd time. This audience enjoyed the movie. While I would have made the movie different, more along the comic version, I again still really enjoyed it.
Jean is alive out there in space just waiting for Disney to continue her flight.
According to Deadline there were issues with domestic marketing before the merger even happened.
This leads us to the mishap of Fox marketing. With the Disney-Fox merger looming, we understand they’ve been a mess, distracted, with a revolving door of execs. We heard this around the time that Alita came out, that the filmmakers were dealing with different people in different marketing meetings. Some folks inform us that ever since Marc Weinstock left Fox as the head of domestic marketing in November 2016 (he’s now over at Paramount), the studio has been challenged to event-ize their slate (i.e. War of the Planet of the Apes, Alita, Dark Phoenix, and even Widows, which played well with audiences. However, give credit where credit is due — Bohemian Rhapsody was a magnificent swan song for the studio).
I understand in meetings, some marketing execs didn’t even realize the release date changes on Dark Phoenix, and weren’t cognizant of the fact that the film was opening up against another franchise this weekend (i.e. Secret Life of Pets 2). Says one source, “They never brought it up in meetings that we were on the same date.” Another bashed the marketing materials: “Sophie Turner is a beautiful actress, and they never showed that in any of the marketing materials. Instead, they made her look like a zombie.”
Once the merger happened, there was little for Disney to do. Materials were already up at CinemaCon at the beginning of April days after the merger. We hear Disney tried to push Dark Phoenix through its vertical integration, i.e. Disney Channel, but they didn’t have enough time and were inheriting a film that already had bad buzz with its reshoots and release date changes.