EP 174: Dark Phoenix Bombs, Reactions & Reviews With Chris Arrant

‘Dark Phoenix’ Bound To Lose $100M+ After Worst Domestic Opening In ‘X- Men’ Series: Here’s Why

Deadline.com

Dark Phoenix was not the X-Men movie that moviegoers were looking forward to: Critics showed that with a 22% Rotten Tomatoes score, while audiences demonstrated that both in exits (B- CinemaScore, lowest ever for the franchise, and an awful 69% positive on PostTrak) and with their wallets, only spending $33M stateside, the lowest debut ever for the Fox/Marvel mutant franchise.

Even though Dark Phoenix is the No. 1 winner around the globe with $140M –down substantially from the worldwide launches of X-Men: Days of Future Past ($262.9M), Logan ($247.4M) and X-Men: Apocalypse ($166.6M), finance experts tell us that the tale of Jean Grey will burn out with an estimated $100M-$120M loss after ancillaries, off a combined production and P&A estimated cost of $350M+ (which includes reshoots). Final global B.O. is projected at $300M-$325M, with one film finance suit telling us “If it drops like a stone, $285M. Don’t forget it was a holiday in China, and even that was pretty low ($45.7M).”

There’s a lot of finger-pointing to go around here, much of it falling on Fox, not new gargantuan parent Disney. It was Fox, in the end, that orphaned the finale of this once prized franchise to the Disney merger.

Much of Dark Phoenix‘s failure comes off the stench of 2016’s X-Men:

Apocalypse, which critics pegged before the latest chapter as the worst X- Men ever (47% Rotten RT), and the pic was the second-lowest grossing in the franchise stateside, $155.4M, with its Memorial Day grosses of $79M+ coming in well below the $100M that the industry was expecting at the time. Also, as social media monitor RelishMix observed heading into the weekend, X-Men fans already said goodbye to the mutants with that movie and Logan.

Now,

Kinberg, we hear, was flexible and rewrote. Days of Future Past erased the timeline of The Last Stand, so a rebooted story about Jean Grey was possible here. Our sources tell us that

Dark Phoenix was originally planned to be two movies, we hear, and

during late pre-production, the studio changed gears and said it was to be

one movie.

continual headache, and the feature adaptation of Chris Claremont, John

testing Dark Phoenix was a

Byrne, and David Cockrum’s fan-beloved Dark Phoenix Saga comic was hard

to get right.

. There have been reports out there that the ending was changed-up because it was too similar to Captain

Marvel. This isn’t true: No one on the Fox/Dark Phoenix production side had any intel of what Captain Marvel would be like before it was released. It was the all-team reshoot that pushed Dark Phoenix from its original Nov. 2 release date (which went to ultimate 4-time Oscar winner and Fox blockbuster finale pre-merger Bohemian Rhapsody) to Feb. 14. We understand Kinberg got to make the film he wanted to make, and was flexible about reshoots with the studio. Many would like to feasibly blame a screenwriter-turned-first time $200M production film director on missing the mark here. However, as we wrote, Kinberg demonstrated his finesse in saving previous Fox/Marvel and X-Men productions. Fox production executives could have gone with a more seasoned director, but decided not to, and in doing so, they failed in riding herd on Kinberg early enough. By the time they did decided to ride monitor Kinberg, it was too late, and production was too far down the road.
20th Century Fox

. Just because a superhero movie undergoes reshoots doesn’t mean that it’s destined to fail (i.e. Suicide

Squad went from dark to funny in tone and dazzled with $746.8M). We hear that Dark Phoenix had even less reshoots than X-Men: First Class, Days of Future Past and Apocalypse. And this is where we turn to Fox PR and marketing mismanaging the image and perception of Dark Phoenix. Word was leaked and not controlled about reshoots for Dark Phoenix and New Mutants, and when that isn’t managed, it already transmits a message to fans that something is afoul. The headlines on Star Wars: Rogue One‘s reshoots were less so than the public divorce of the studio from original Solo: A Star Wars Story directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and that resulted in the former being a profitable film and the other a stinker.

A note about reshoots: They’re completely normal on a superhero film of

this size, and are routinely budgeted

First off, the movie was never intended to be a summer film. Dark Phoenix

We hear that Fox Studios CEO Stacey Snider was insistent on the change, and gave James Cameron the better pre-merger release date of Feb. 14 for Alita: Battle Angel after the pricey production was pulled out of the crowded Christmas corridor. Putting Dark Phoenix after Captain Marvel, and in particular after Avengers: Endgame, simply damaged the film’s image further. The best Marvel movies of the year are already set in critics and audience minds, and, natch, innate comparisons will be made. Fox, back in September, said they pushed Dark Phoenix to June after the second trailer popped in China, and opening over this weekend’s holiday was in the pic’s best interest (China beat the U.S. opening, $48.1M to $33M). DIsney/Fox

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).

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.

Coming away from this weekend, Fox’s greatest loss is Disney’s greatest gain: Even before Dark Phoenix opened, there was talk about how Disney’s MCU is bound to resuscitate X-Men.

https://screencrush.com/gwyneth-paltrow-didnt-know-she-was-in-spiderman/

Gwyneth Paltrow Had No Idea She Was in ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’

Do you remember the fun scene at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming where Tony Stark tries to introduce Peter Parker as the newest member of the Avengers, but at the last minute he begs off and decides to stay a friendly neighborhood Spidey just a little longer? The scene included a fun cameo from Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, the CEO of Stark Industries and Tony’s right-hand woman. It was one of the highlights of Spider- Man: Homecoming.

That’s news to Paltrow! She had no idea she was even in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

First off, Favreau and celebrity chef Roy Choi explain that they’ll be making a dish called a “pepper pot,” which is absolutely delightful.

Netflix

The conversation starts out simple enough — with Paltrow asking what the heck the show she’s currently on in the first place is, which is, frankly, relatable.

I ALSO don't know what I'm doing at any given moment.

I ALSO don’t know what I’m doing at any given moment.

Favreau delves into a quick explanation about the new show, noting that the idea came to him randomly while they were filming Spider-Man: Homecoming “together.”

Paltrow is quick to correct him, noting she was NOT at ANY POINT in a Spider-Man movie.

Once Favreau realizes Paltrow is serious, it leads him to make this hilarious facial expression:

Frankly, I don’t understand how this isn’t a meme or whatever the young kids call them now.

Anyway, Favreau doubles down, with Choi even adding the word “Homecoming” to make it clearer which film they’re referring to, but she STILL doesn’t remember.

Finally, Favreau explicitly describes the scene they were in and you can literally SEE the memory flooding back into Paltrow’s brain. It’s adorable