Given that the latest X-Men outing, DARK PHOENIX, is the last we will be seeing of the X-Men for a while the hope is the team can go out with a bang at the box office. While it has a fight ahead of it this weekend with the release of the animated film THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2, it had no trouble winning Thursday preview night by earning a reported $5 million from its first showings.
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Per Deadline, Disney is reporting that the Fox movie made a number akin to recent blockbuster titles DETECTIVE PIKACHU ($5.7 million), SHAZAM! ($5.9 million) and GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS ($6.3 million). All those movies opened near the $50 million range, which is where the current projections are at for DARK PHOENIX’s first weekend. However, like GODZILLA, it will hard to tell how frontloading and critic reviews impact the opening, as the monster movie was also expected to open in the same range before coming in at $47 million.
Compared to the other X-Men titles, the first showings represent a solid drop from X-MEN: APOCALYPSE and X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, which both made $8.2 million and $8.1 million in 2016 and 2014, respectively. Those movies opened to $65 million and $90 million during Memorial Day weekend, which this one avoided so as to not compete with GODZILLA, ALADDIN and more.
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While $5 million is nothing to balk at it does represent diminishing returns of sorts for the comic book series. Anticipation has been rather low for this latest outing, coming out three years after the poorly-received APOCALYPSE, and with matters made worse by the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the whole series at 22 percent. Audience scores are also not great at the moment, with a 63 percent score so far on RT, making use of the site’s new verified user rating system which only takes ratings from people who can prove they saw the movie.
As for PETS 2, preview nights are not always a great indicator of success as parents wait for afternoon shows starting opening day. That said, the movie's $2.3 million frame is also much less than the $5.3 million previous outing, all before it went on to have the biggest opening weekend for an original IP at $104 million. PETS 2 isn't expected to come close to that, but it's poised to win the weekend with a $60-65 million weekend.
DARK PHOENIX and THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2 are in theaters now.