Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg on the film’s box-office disappointment

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Fox's X-MEN franchise came to a close last week with the release of DARK PHOENIX, and unfortunately, the Simon Kinberg film hasn't exactly been lighting the box-office on fire. At the moment, DARK PHOENIX has only grossed $42 million domestically, and Kinberg recently opened up about the film's box-office disappointment while speaking with KCRW's The Business host Kim Masters.

Despite DARK PHOENIX bombing at the box-office and receiving the worst reviews of the franchise, Simon Kinberg said that it's not painful to talk about as he "actually really like[s] the movie, [and] I had an amazing time making the movie." However, at the end of the day, Kinberg puts the blame on himself. "It clearly is a movie that didn't connect with audiences that didn't see it, it didn't connect enough with audiences that did see it. So that's on me. When you make movies, you can't control what's going to happen to the movie once you let it out in the world." Kinberg takes a little solace in a conversation he had with Ridley Scott while the pair worked together on THE MARTIAN, in which Scott told Kinberg that G.I. JANE was his favourite movie he's worked on, despite it not being considered one of his best films.

He said it was his favorite because it was just a great process and he learned a lot on the process of making it. I've thought about that a lot over the years, and I thought about it a whole lot over the last weekend.

One excuse for DARK PHOENIX's poor reception lays the blame on the film's June release. DARK PHOENIX had originally been slated for a November release and was then pushed back to February and finally June, but Kinberg says that it's impossible to know whether the film would have been received differently had they made their original date. "There's no way to know, and that's the thing that can drive people crazy, 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," said Kiinberg. "I will say that I didn't make the movie as a summer movie, I made the movie to be released in November; we couldn't make that date, then the decision was made to not release it in February, then it was put in the middle of summer, and it's not a movie that was made for summer, it was made for a slightly more contemplative time in the marketplace." Kinberg also received a message of support from DEADPOOL director Tim Miller, who said that "people will come to see the movie differently, and out of the context of this particular moment, see things in it they will appreciate and that he appreciated as a fan."

DARK PHOENIX is now playing in theaters, so check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray and let us know what you thought of the film!