The bastard child of the X-Men franchise seems to have done a pretty fair job at the weekend box office.
Despite being kicked around for just over two years, the movie finally had a release in U.S. theaters this weekend that saw it do some decent numbers considering so much of the country is still straying away from cinemas. The latest and definitely final movie to come out of the original Fox line of X-Men flicks debuted with a $3 million Friday which is actually a major win for the studio. Reports say that the first cut was so bad that studio heads wanted the entire movie shot all over again due to its amateurish production values and awful story telling. And honestly, reviews of the film have not been kind. It's been called the worst of the X-Men film franchise and has been ravaged almost across the board. It even beat out Dark Phoenix which is a hard task in itself.
Once the film was acquired by Disney, many tweaks were made to get it in better shape, but still it's said to be an awful mess that tried to mix horror elements of Dream Warriors into the comic book realm. We hear it didn't work. No matter what, this is a major victory for a movie that might never have been released. Just a couple weeks ago, the Russell Crowe movie Unhinged earned just $600,000 over the three day period. For The New Mutants to make $3 million just on Friday is a great take for a movie that's basically a creative failure.
We could probably sit here all day and rant about the last few X-Men movies. But instead, we'll concentrate on the future. Soon, Disney will probably fully reboot the series, hopefully giving us a better continuity for the much loved franchise.
-CG