Summer Sequelitis Scorches Franchises to B.O. Lows: 'Secret Life of Pets 2' $47M+, 'Dark Phoenix' Dead At $33M - Worst Debut Ever For 'X-Men' Movie
Here's a trend: three franchise films in a row this summer —
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, The Secret Life of Pets 2, and
Dark Phoenix — opened to roughly half of what their previous films did. And we may have a fourth title next weekend, if
Men in Black International does half of
MIB 3's $54.4M.
What does this say? In most cases, franchise fatigue: The previous film was fine, and there was never a reason to make another movie. That, or there was already a complete hatred unseen with the previous installment, and no one wanted to see another chapter in the franchise. But studio development executives sometimes suffer from not being able to see the forest for the trees, and become clouded by the twin delusions of grandeur: Chinese and overseas box office results, and/or not knowing when to put the brakes on sequels, as they could endanger a franchise altogether.
While
Dark Phoenix will get singed more this weekend as being the final nail in the Fox/Marvel
X-Men franchise, both commercially and story-wise (that is, until Disney/Marvel decides to resuscitate it), we can't let Universal/Illumination's
The Secret Life of Pets 2 off the hook. Universal is reporting a 3-day of
$47.1M for
Pets 2, -55% from the original's $104.3M opening. The first film scored the best domestic debut ever for an original piece of IP. With Fandango previews the running cume is
$48M. Global running total is
$97M and next week the sequel will push the
Secret Life of Pets franchise to $1 billion worldwide next week.
Yes, yes, yes,
Pets 2 was made at a responsible $80M production cost before P&A, according to Illumination standards, and film finance experts expect the sequel to turn a profit, as the pic will leg out from its great exits of an A- CinemaScore (same as first movie) and 4 1/2 stars (as of last night) from general audiences, parents and kids under 12. Unfortunately this wasn't enough to push the film past the $50M mark, though Saturday at $17M was +4% over Friday's $16.4M. Saturday was even more sinister to
Dark Phoenix with a $10.8M gross, repping a 23% drop from Friday's $14M, still the worst opening ever for an
X-Men movie at
$33Mper Disney. Worldwide
Dark Phoenix is the No. 1 movie with
$140M, $30M less than the $170M global projection our experts were seeing (much of that drop having to do with U.S./Canada). Also the global debut for
Dark Phoenix is down from
X-Men Days of Future Past ($262.9M) by -47% and
Apocalypse ($166.6M) by 16% (unadjusted for inflation or currency exchanges). China at $45.6M is under the $50M-$60M projection, but +28% bigger than
X-Men: Days of Future Past. Fox always knew they could count on the Middle Kingdom due to the traction of the second trailer there.
Poor, poor
Dark Phoenix. On top of being the worst debut for an
X-Men film, she's also the worst reviewed at 22% Rotten and the worst received with a B- CinemaScore (lowest ever for the franchise) and ComScore/Screen Engine PostTrak's of 3 stars among general audiences, 69% positive and a low 49% definite recommend. Despite having better exits than
Dark Phoenix with an 81% positive and A- CinemaScore, moviegoers weren't amused with technically the last PG-13
X-Men movie,
Apocalypse, and they showed that with their wallets: 4-day projections of $100M dropped to $79.8M during its opening, and stateside, the film is the second-lowest grossing
X-Men movie at $155.4M, with
First Class being the lowest at $146.4M.
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