I don’t normally like to post about the box office winners and losers outside of the weekly roundup (which has all but been eliminated now thanks to the pandemic), but this involves my beloved X-Men. With 2019 long in the books, the numbers have been added up as to which films cost their respective studios the most money. Turns out, this dishonorable distinction goes to Dark Phoenix, the final X-Men film before Fox turned the reins over to Disney.
According to numbers crunched by Deadline, Dark Phoenix cost Fox about $133M when all was said and done. Oof. The numbers go like this: the film made $252M at the box office, with Fox taking about $100M of that due to the split with theaters. Throw in VOD, Bluray/DVD, and TV, and that’s another $110M in revenue. So with that $210M earned so far, one then needs to factor in the roughly $343M in production and marketing costs. And there’s your $133M in total losses.
A sad way to go out, for sure, and I’m betting Disney sees that and is happy to keep New Mutants on the shelf even longer.
And in case you’re wondering, the next biggest money losers were Terminator: Dark Fate at $122M, and Cats with $113M.
