Dark Phoenix Quietly Passed An X-Men Movie Milestone This Week

It hasn't been the best of finales for 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise, which comes to a close with the recent release of Dark Phoenix. This will be the final X-Men film under the Fox banner now that the X-Men characters have been scooped up by Disney thanks to the Fox merger, and they will next likely be seen years from now when the characters become a part of the MCU proper. The era isn't completely over though, as Dark Phoenix is still in theaters, and it recently passed a surprising if somewhat depressing milestone in its fourth week at the box office.

To date, Dark Phoenix has pulled in $64,198,317 million at the domestic box office, and one Marvel fan noticed that with that amount the movie did surpass another of the X-Men films, though not int he way you might expect.

Reddit user PocupineTongue posted a screenshot of the adjusted box office numbers that showed Dark Phoenix's total (which at the time was $64,024,900) and a spotlight on The Wolverine's opening weekend numbers, which came in at $61,040,200. So, Dark Phoenix finally passed another X-Men film, which deserves a hooray until you realize that Dark Phoenix has had four weeks in theaters to get to that number and The Wolverine did it in its opening weekend.

Congratulations to Dark Phoenix, which quietly passed an X-Men movie milestone this past week. from r/Marvel

So yeah, a sort of backhanded achievement, but an achievement nonetheless.

Unfortunately, Dark Phoenix still lags behind every other X-Men film domestically. The Wolverine pulled in $132 million over its whole run, and Dark Phoenix will have to put some work in to even hit that number. Worldwide things get a little brighter, as the film has pulled in $245.3 million, but again that still puts it behind the original X-Men movie's $296.3 million, and we're not sure if it has enough time in theaters to catch it.

The movie also reportedly cost a whopping $200 million to make, so if you double that for the promotion you're looking at a significant loss for the studio. In short, this wasn't what anyone wanted for this era of X-Men movies' final bow, but hopefully, Marvel can work their magic on some of their most popular characters and bring them back to where they belong.

There is still one more Fox X-Men project yet to be released, the oft-delayed New Mutants, which is evidently already done but has yet to nail down release date or a platform. We'll keep you posted when that changes, but in the meantime let us know what you thought of Dark Phoenix in the comments!