The Worst X-Men Movie Failed Hard - But A Marvel Veteran Knows How To Fix It

Following the massive success of 2014's "X-Men: Days of Future Past" — a Marvel superhero extravaganza that featured both the younger and older iterations of several key X-Men — the then-20^th Century Fox franchise began to wane in popularity. After "Days of Future Past" had a global gross of $746 million against a $200 million budget, its 2016 follow-up "X-Men: Apocalypse" pulled in $200 million less with a worldwide take of $544 million against a $178 million price tag.

The franchise hit rock bottom, though, with "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" in 2019, which earned a disappointing $252.4 million global gross against a $200 million budget. The paltry take of "Dark Phoenix" greatly diminished hope for any future installments highlighting Marvel's legendary mutant superheroes, especially considering how Disney officially completed its $71.3 billion of Fox the same year.

However, Simon Kinberg, who has produced every "X-Men" film since 2011's "X-Men: First Class" and also wrote and directed "X-Men: Dark Phoenix," told JoBlo in September 2023 that the Dark Phoenix story as it exists now on film could be fixed as a limited series.

"There's certainly a bunch of things that I've worked on that I think would make for a cool series," Kinberg explained to JoBlo. "The idea of doing Dark Phoenix as a series is fascinating because what I felt in constructing the movie, and even initially when writing the movie, was that it required more than one movie to tell that story."

Simon Kinberg is certainly no stranger to telling "X-Men" stories for the small screen. From 2017 to 2019 he produced the series "The Gifted" as well as "Legion," both for Fox Television. Kinberg told JoBlo that if he had the opportunity to produce an "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" series, he would root the narrative in the source material.

"I think [I would] do it in a way that was really loyal to the comic [and] to make it as intergalactic as the book and to really get into the Hellfire Club. There's so many different aspects of the story, right?" Kinberg told the publication. "The idea of doing a four-hour, if it were two movies or doing an eight-hour limited series or 10 hours, would really allow you to get into all of the different elements of the original book and original run. But yeah, you know, these days, when I think about a story, I don't immediately think, 'Oh, this is a movie.' I think about it like, 'Oh, this is a cool story. This is an interesting character. What's the best way to tell it?'"

While only time will tell if Kinberg gets a chance to redo "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" — which starred Sophie Turner in the title role — as a limited series, the filmmaker is still very invested in the "X-Men" movie universe. Kinberg, who was a producer on the first two "Deadpool" films, is back as a producer on "Deadpool 3." The film will reunite Kinberg and his lead "X-Men" star Hugh Jackman, who last worked together on "Logan" in 2017. As for the new tale, Ryan Reynolds has promised fans a different Wolverine for "Deadpool 3."