X-Men: Dark Phoenix took flight last night in Thursday night previews and got off to a decent start for the latest X-Men entry.
Dark Phoenix grossed $5 million in Thursday night previews which isn’t a bad number on its own but it’s going to need to play consistently through the weekend in order to not be frontloaded. The film is tracking for a $50-55 million opening but this was also the case with Godzilla: King of the Monsters which grossed $6.3 million in Thursday night previews but fell below tracking for the weekend by grossing just $47.7 million.
Dark Phoenix‘s Thursday is down 39% from the $8.2 million and $8.1 million preview night respectfully made by the last two X-Men films, 2016’s Apocalypse and 2014’s Days of Future Past. Thursday night repped 23% of Days of Future Past‘s $35.5 million opening Friday and 31% of Apocalypse‘s $26.3 million. Both began over Memorial Day weekend with Days of Future Past making $90.8 million over 3 days and Apocalypse $65.7 million. Dark Phoenix is the worst reviewed X-Men movie of the bunch at 21% rotten so it’s going to need a huge word of mouth push to not fall below its tracking. Working in its favor is that its gross is very close to the $5.7 million preview number for Detective Pikachu and the $5.9 million of Shazam! and they went on to gross $54 million for the weekend so there’s still hope that Dark Phoenix lands in that vicinity.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 also got started in previews last night with $2.3 million at 3,250 locations that started showtimes at 6 PM. This is an impressive figure considering that the target audience is still not out in full force at that time so the weekend could play very well once the kids have more chances to see it. That being said, I mentioned in my predictions that the sequel wouldn’t touch the $104 million opening of the original and these numbers go a long way to prove that. The figure is down 57% from the first 2016 installment’s $5.3 million previews which ultimately yielded the best opening weekend for an original animated film. The first film opened later in the summer so most of its audience was admittedly more available for preview screenings.
