The New Mutants’ box office is a new low for X-Men franchise
By Josh Baggins
The New Mutants has the lowest box office returns of any X-Men movie, with several contributing factors.
As of October 25th, The New Mutants has currently earned $23 million domestically and $44 million worldwide in ticket sales. That is by far the worst box office cumulation in the X-Men movie franchise, falling much lower than the previous nadir, X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
That film was released in the summer of 2019 and pulled in only $65 million in the states, despite being the swan song for several great actors portraying fan favorite mutants. Dark Phoenix was the first X-film that failed to reach $100 million – New Mutants is now the second.
The most obvious reason for the New Mutants’ dismal performance is the COVID-19 pandemic. Some movie theaters have not even re-opened since March, and others have been hit by a second wave of closures. For the theaters that have opened, it has been slow going trying to get audiences to visit their establishments while the coronavirus is still a threat. For that reason alone, it is not equitable to compare New Mutants against the other 10 X-Men movies (12 if you count Deadpool).
Other factors contributing to the New Mutants’ record low revenue is its generally poor reviews coupled with an overall declining interest in the franchise. Dark Phoenix was plagued by similar troubles, so it was almost expected for New Mutants to continue the downward spiral of the X-Men cinematic universe. The movies were the last two in the series to be produced by Fox and are therefore an end of an era for the mutants. Since Disney acquired 21st Century Fox, fans have been anticipating the children of the atom joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which makes the final pair of Fox entries feel more dispensable.
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The New Mutants’ theatrical release brought in just $7 million on its opening weekend and it has been dropping steadily from there, week to week. The film has seen an over 30% reduction in sales each weekend for the past several weekends, even though there are not many new releases hitting theaters during the pandemic.
The slightest glimmer of hope for The New Mutants could come with the upcoming Halloween weekend. Given that The New Mutants is rooted in horror elements (those smiley faced men are pretty terrifying), moviegoers who are looking for some jump scares may give the movie a try. The New Mutants earned only $286,000 this past weekend, just barely hanging onto the top 10 at the box office, so it could optimistically trend in a positive direction over the Halloween weekend for the first time since it’s August 28th release.
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Have you seen The New Mutants in theaters? Are you waiting to watch it at home or plan to skip it altogether? Let us know in the comments below!