Think that superhero movies a guaranteed thing? Try releasing a film in a defunct cinematic universe as the follow-up to a universally panned outing. Basically, everything went wrong for Dark Phoenix and it looks like the world took Rick’s advice and didn’t go see it. The movie pulled in a stunningly bad $33 million domestically, which wasn’t even enough to pull it ahead of The Secret Life of Pets 2, which under performed slightly with $47 million. That makes Dark Phoenix the big loser and it’ll have to look internationally where it landed $45 million in China to even remotely be thought of as not a terrible disaster.
The thing is, I doubt Disney cares. Hell, Marvel probably doesn’t want anyone seeing this at all as they one day will actually implement the Phoenix Saga in a competent and coherent manner. The less people who see this the less people who remember it and the easier their job is in the future.
This makes two weekends in a row where big movies have under performed, though both weekends have outperformed last year. Godzilla: King of the Monsters was more of a surprise than Dark Phoenix, however. The former film also has a much stronger international box, but it did dive hard this weekend domestically. We may have to wait until Spider-Man: Far From Home to see an action movie bring in big money, though Toy Story 4 should deliver the box office from the doldrums before that.
1. The Secret Life of Pets 2 –
2. Dark Phoenix – $33,000,000
3. Aladdin – $24,500,000
4. Godzilla: King of the Monsters – $15,540,000
5. Rocketman – $14,000,000
6. Ma – $7,820,000
7. John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum – $7,400,000
8. Avengers: Endgame – $4,800,000
9. Pokémon Detective Pikachu – $2,980,000
10. Booksmart – $1,577,259
