Box Office: 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix' May Gross Less Than 'Alita: Battle Angel'
We got a third and presumably final trailer for Dark Phoenix this morning. That’s not a surprise, as X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse both had three trailers, and it makes sense that Fox would have something ready to go for Avengers: Endgame. Yes, this morning’s X-Men trailer drop kicks off what could be a flurry of pre-Endgame trailer drops.share
Hobbs and Shaw gets a new trailer tomorrow, while we’ll see if (speculation alert) Men in Black International, Detective Pikachu and Rocketman get new teases for the big summer kick-off flick. So the good news is that this third trailer for what is the final chapter in the ongoing X-Men franchise (New Mutants is something of a stand-alone) is the best one so far. The bad news is that it’s not a grandiose improvement on what has come before.
It’s no secret that the second attempt at a Dark Phoenix adaptation has been bedeviled by almost as much behind-the-scenes melodrama as the first attempt. But while X-Men: The Last Stand was coming off the much-liked X2: X-Men United (and existed in a time when mega-movies were less common and the X-Men franchise was among the biggest of the big), Dark Phoenix is the follow-up to the disappointing Apocalypse. That film earned just $155 million and $543 million worldwide, partially thanks to a whopping $121 million in China.
That was huge for a superhero flick in 2016, and all signs point to this chapter needing another China bailout. Of course, with Fox now part of the Disney empire and Kevin Feige eventually set to reboot the property somewhere around Phase Five of the MCU, Disney is actually better off if Dark Phoenix flops. I’m not presuming intentional sabotage, but if Dark Phoenix turns out to be a critically-acclaimed super-smash, well, then it’ll be harder to justify starting over even within the confines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.