Simon Kinberg Dishes Out Details On Dark Phoenix’s Dark Fate

For the past 20 years, the X-Men franchise has been a prime example of a group of movies that are way ahead of its time, raking in a huge sum of money in the box office. Unfortunately, the recent X-Men Movie, Dark Phoenix, did not exceed the expectations.

In an interview with KCRW, debut director Simon Kinberg commented on how much he loved working on Dark Phoenix, despite this being his first foray into the director’s chair. “I actually really like the movie, [and] I had an amazing time making the movie,” Kinberg said. The 2019 X-Men movie gained $33 million, the lowest box office performance in X-Men history. The first-ever X-Men flick garnered a jaw-dropping $157.2 million in 2000 while Apocalypse, the 2016 X-Men film, earned $155 million.

Simon Kinberg On the Box Office Failure of Dark Phoenix

Kinberg said that although he loved the movie, making Dark Phoenix was not an easy task for him. The film suffered a lot—undergoing reshoots and the supposed release date being moved following the recent Disney-FOX merger. There are a lot of reasons why the sequel did not come across as good as it is supposed to be, but Kinberg owned the mishaps of the film and said “I’m here, I’m saying when a movie doesn’t work, put it on me. I’m the writer-director, the movie didn’t connect with audiences, that’s on me.”

Kinberg finished the interview by saying, “I mean honestly, there’s no way to know, and that’s the thing that I think can drive people crazy and keep them up and be thinking about a movie’s failure years later. If the lesson you’ve learned is that you had the wrong date or you didn’t have good marketing–that’s not a lesson.”

Dark Phoenix and Godzilla did not come through as Box Office

Elsewhere, however, Dark Phoenix is not the only movie who failed to meet its quota, with Warner Bros.’ Godzilla: King of the Monsters only grossing $48 million on its opening week, dropping to 15 million dollars the following week. King of the Monsters was the highest-grossing film of the weekend when it opened last May 31st.

The next film connected to the X-Men Saga from Fox and Disney is New Mutants. The movie stars Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga and Blu Hunt. It follows the story of young mutants imprisoned in a secret facility who discover their powers while inside.

But just like Dark Phoenix, the release date for ‘New Mutants’ was postponed several times before landing on April 3, 2020—a year later than the supposed release date of January 2018. Now, the movie faces options of whether to release it in theaters or go with digital platforms like Hulu or in the upcoming Disney+ instead.