Apocalypse lacked the original cast, which was the main reason why people saw it. Also, the movie’s selling point was that the world was endangered but the ending of DOFP ruined those sakes, even Chris Claremont said this was a problem and that they should have had the original cast take on Apocalypse instead.
"The story so far: As usual, Ginger and I are engaged in our quest to find out what the hell is going on and save humanity from my nemesis, some bastard who is presumably responsible." - Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.
“ Well hell just froze over. Because CM Punk is back in the WWE.” - Jcogginsa.
“You can take the boy outta the mom’s basement, but you can’t take the mom’s basement outta the boy!” - LA Knight.
"Revel in What You Are." Bray Wyatt.
Well the Disney buyout was announced in December 2017. With rumors talk began earlier than that. Executives likely knew they couldn't approve a 2 film $400+ million dollar budget to start filming back to back in summer of 2017. Then there was reshoots done as they actually let Kinberg spend a year fine tuning the special effects for this comically. But yeah I think Fox knew that approving 2 films like this with such a high budget would be a huge risk to do plus Disney was interested in buying as well.
Because at the same time they were spending $200 million for this film , Deadpool 2 had a $110 million dollar budget filming during this as well as New Mutants (no idea of budget , Disney just approved reshoots for April 2020 release now). So there was a lot committed then.
"The story so far: As usual, Ginger and I are engaged in our quest to find out what the hell is going on and save humanity from my nemesis, some bastard who is presumably responsible." - Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.
“ Well hell just froze over. Because CM Punk is back in the WWE.” - Jcogginsa.
“You can take the boy outta the mom’s basement, but you can’t take the mom’s basement outta the boy!” - LA Knight.
"Revel in What You Are." Bray Wyatt.
I know that Dark Phoenix was a bomb and that probably nothing could have saved it. Even if they released it when they originally planned to, it might only have been less of a bomb, but a bomb nonetheless.
However, I think another thing that Fox could have done to make it less of a bomb is actually put the name "X-Men" in the title!
A lot of people say that they didn't know that an X-Men movie was coming out, and while we comics fans know what "Dark Phoenix" means, I don't think DP means a damned thing to the average moviegoer. So anyone just scanning the listings for current movies and comes across the DP name might just keep on scanning because there's no "X-Men" brand name to stop them in their tracks.
It's the only X-Men team movie without their own name in the title, and it's really kind of dumb. The posters spotlighting Sophie Turner, who has pretty much zero recognizability to the general public was also a stupid move.
Unknown actor + unknown title = lots of people don't know what your movie is. Then, do massive reshooting to change the ending. Then, keep changing the release date. Then, have loads of crappy reviews.
I'm now kind of surprised the movie made as much as it did.
What made it worse was the lack of promotion until Disney officially owned Fox. The lay offs from the merger had started happening when significant promotion should have begun.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood...y-fox-freakoutThe situation has had longtime employees on the Fox lot suffering a kind of prolonged trauma since the merger was announced, in December 2017. To hear them tell it, they are being issued mostly vague, Orwellian-lite guidance that outlines dress codes and explains key-card access, but they have been left wanting in terms of business directives. In the middle of February, Fox’s marketing and distribution departments gathered with the filmmakers of Dark Phoenix, the latest X-Men installment from producer-director Simon Kinberg, to lay out their plans for the film’s June release. It was a typical meeting. Ad buys were discussed, and the publicity tour for the film’s stars, including Sophie Turner, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jessica Chastain, was laid out. But it was still disconcerting, both because of all the new faces in the room—a handful of high-end consultants have been hired temporarily to fill the jobs recently vacated by long-term employees—and because of the ad hoc approach the Fox marketing team was taking toward the film’s release, four months away.
“We know when we are dropping a trailer, but we are nowhere near where we should be at this time,” said one marketing exec who was at the meeting. “It’s frightening. I would be mad if I were a filmmaker.”
“What’s not normal is the elephant in the room, which is that most people there are not going to be the people that are still in the job when the movie opens,” added another attendee.
“Nobody has come around and said, ‘This is what’s going on.’ Why can’t they just tell us that there is no place for us? Why can’t they let anyone know?” said the marketing exec. “We are not leaving because we didn’t make money for the company or we did a bad job. We are leaving because of pure capitalism.”
This was reported again by Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/he...-plans-1216859At the time, preparations for the Disney-Fox acquisition were in full swing. Marketing and publicity and distribution execs were either being forced out or had one eye on the door. "The campaign was muddled," says a former Fox executive. "Was this the final X-Men movie? Was it about a character going back? This movie just got lost."
An NRG tracking poll taken in May showed that Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios' rival superhero franchise, was rated higher than Dark Phoenix as a choice for moviegoers — and that's after Endgame had been playing in theaters for five weeks already. "Definite awareness never got a score over 75 on tracking," says one insider. "An X-Men movie had never been below 90."
"When definite awareness of Rocketman is higher than an X-Men movie, you know you're in strange territory," says another insider.
https://deadline.com/2019/06/dark-ph...hy-1202629749/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.
Yup. I’ve actually seen people on social media saying they didn’t know when this was coming out.Then, keep changing the release date.
Reports say that this movie actually had less reshoots than First Class and Days of Future Past. So I don’t think that was much of an issue.Then, do massive reshooting to change the ending.
There was a study from a couple of years ago that suggested Rotten Tomatoes has no great effect on a film’s Box Office, neither negatively or positively.Then, have loads of crappy reviews.
https://variety.com/2017/film/news/r...ds-1202554546/
Think the success of Venom easily proves this.
That’s thanks to Disney’s last minute marketing push. Without the Mouse this would have made less than Rocketman.I'm now kind of surprised the movie made as much as it did.
Last edited by Divine Spark; 06-24-2019 at 07:04 AM.
There may have been rumblings of the buyout/merger, but I think they were cautious to begin with. The original plan was to do Dark Phoenix as a 2 parter. That was the intention of Kinberg and Singer. Almost everybody (cast/crew) were aware of that while filming Apocalypse.
But then Apocalypse drops and it made nowhere near what Days Of Future Past did. A fact which probably didn't sit too well with studio heads who were expecting Apocalypse to do bigger numbers than DOFP.
Obviously, the decision to keep it a single film was probably influenced by the merger. But I am certain the studio was already having doubts well before that.
I'm sorry a Trilogy with the Marketing of the LOTRs IMO couldn't save this story because the core problem was the guy telling it Simon Kinberg.
Well that situation behind the scenes where Singer would take off for a few weeks and disappear. He had a history of every film doing this and finally it came to a head on Bohemian Rhapsody and Fox fired him off the film with a couple weeks to go. Of course the firing could have been a response as well to the latest allegations as well. Either way without Singer there as a sounding board and to actually tell Kinberg that some things needed changed ...we got the film we saw instead.
"The story so far: As usual, Ginger and I are engaged in our quest to find out what the hell is going on and save humanity from my nemesis, some bastard who is presumably responsible." - Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.
“ Well hell just froze over. Because CM Punk is back in the WWE.” - Jcogginsa.
“You can take the boy outta the mom’s basement, but you can’t take the mom’s basement outta the boy!” - LA Knight.
"Revel in What You Are." Bray Wyatt.
I think like the problem with the story is that it only resonates if you are familiar with Xavier and Jean’s narrative arcs in previous films. I thought the emotional core of the film was undercooked until I saw it on a second viewing after rewatching scenes from X3, DOFP, and Apocalypse.
Oh, I agree. I don’t know if it’s because he wanted to be subtle or if he thinks that the only people who watch these movies are hardcore fans that remember these details.
That scene in Apocalypse shows that Jean’s feared that she was going to lose control and hurt someone. So you can see why Xavier wanted to hide the fact that she already lost control of powers and killed her mother.
Last edited by Divine Spark; 06-24-2019 at 05:46 AM.