The opening weekend of Dark Phoenix, the final movie in Fox's long-running X-Men series, may have looked bleak, with the film securing the worst domestic opening in the entire 19-year-old franchise, earning just $33 million. However, it's nothing compared to the numbers coming in for its second weekend.
According to Forbes, Dark Phoenix earned $2.348 million on Friday, which is down 83.2% from its opening day haul of $14 million. Such a steep drop from Week 1 to Week 2 puts Dark Phoenix ahead of the -81% drop Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice suffered from, which at the time was the biggest drop ever for a big budget superhero movie.
Even if you remove big budget comic book movies from the equation, Dark Phoenix's decline is the third biggest drop after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II and High School Musical 3, which dropped -84% and -90%, respectively.
The record-setting drop is already well ahead of the 70% drop from 2008's Hellboy II: The Golden Army, though the film could blame its decline from the monster opening of The Dark Knight.
Estimates have Dark Phoenix earning around $51.352 million by Sunday evening, which means it would pass the opening weekends of 2013's The Wolverine ($53 million), 200's X-Men ($54 million) and 2011's X-Men: First Class ($55 million).
Directed and written by Simon Kinberg, Dark Phoenix stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters and Jessica Chastain. The film is out in theaters now.