When it comes to second weekend drop-offs, almost every film sees it happen – even the mighty Avengers: Endgame. At this point, it’s just something that’s to be expected, no matter how big the movie is.
Still, in the case of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, it was particularly bad. Already, it had received a thrashing from critics, not to mention fans also came down hard on it all over social media, leading to the film scoring the lowest box office opening ever in the franchise. And as for that second weekend drop-off? Well, it wasn’t pretty.
Dark Phoenix tanked hard last week and found itself with the dishonor of having the second biggest Friday drop in superhero movie history. It should come as no surprise then that theaters are beginning to turn their back on the pic, with Exhibitor Relations reporting the following over on Twitter.
Fire extinguished. X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX will lose 1,667 theaters (-44%) in just its 3rd week of release.
Ouch! Clearly, this is going to seriously hurt the film’s box office numbers and means that it probably won’t be around much longer, as other theaters will no doubt follow suit in the weeks to come. Where it’ll ultimately end its run, we won’t know for a while yet, but with a current worldwide gross of $208 million, it’s definitely been a rough couple of weeks for Dark Phoenix.
If nothing else, this just shows that the franchise is in desperate need of a reboot. And it’ll be getting exactly that somewhere down the line now that the mutants are back home at Marvel Studios. It may not be for another five years or so, according to Kevin Feige, but given the widespread feeling of X-Men fatigue among fans, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to rest the property for a bit. Especially after the disaster that was X-Men: Dark Phoenix.