The last main installment of the X-Men franchise from Fox, Dark Phoenix, debuted to a disastrous franchise-low opening at the domestic box office this weekend, taking in only $33 million.
X-Men producer Simon Kinberg makes his directorial debut with the film that takes another stab at the Dark Phoenix saga, after the poorly received X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. The famous comic book storyline features Jean Grey struggling to control and succumbing to the Phoenix Force within her.
Dark Phoenix has been rumored to have cost Fox around $200 million to produce due to reshoots that reworked the film’s original third act, which was found to be too similar to both Captain America: Civil War and the recent Captain Marvel. The reshoots lasted a total of two and a half weeks last summer and reportedly cost Fox under $10 million. The film was originally due out November 2, 2018, before it was pushed back to February 14, 2019. But Fox ultimately rescheduled the release date again, moving it to June 7, 2019, in order to allow time to finish work on the film’s visual effects for the new third act.
Kinberg not only wrote and directed Dark Phoenix, but he also produced the film with Hutch Parker and Lauren Schuler Donner, though the latter denied having any involvement with the actual production of the project herself just yesterday. Within the X-Men franchise, Kinberg is best known for having written the main installments of the film series since X-Men: The Last Stand, save for X-Men: First Class. He also served as a producer on Deadpool 2 and is producing the X-Men spin-off The New Mutants, which will be the final film of the cinematic universe Bryan Singer launched in 2000.
Written and directed by Simon Kinberg, Dark Phoenix stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters, and Jessica Chastain. Here is the synopsis for Dark Phoenix:
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.
Dark Phoenix is now playing.
Source: Box Office
