>Insiders tell The Hollywood Reporter that in a series of postmortem meetings on Apocalypse, execs came away thinking that the movie's failure had been due to an excessive amount of explosions and scale, not due to franchise fatigue generally. "There was a misguided feeling that [Apocalypse] was an anomaly, that we just got it wrong," says one Fox insider familiar with those meetings. "We were wrong."
>Audience fatigue and erosion have hit even the most venerable franchises. Hence the proliferation of reboots, reimaginings and ever grander cinematic universe ambitions. “It’s a real head-scratcher on how you keep coming back,” says one studio executive, noting that even James Bond and Star Wars have had ups and downs. Some franchises, like Fast and Furious, have reinvented themselves with new concepts and a new cast. Others, such as Die Hard and Terminator, keep underperforming critically (if not commercially) no matter how persistently producers bring them back.
>With Dark Phoenix, Fox did not reboot X-Men. In some ways, it doubled down on what it had; it went back to the cast from Apocalypse and then decided to tackle a story previously adapted in 2006’s X-Men: Last Stand, the Brett Ratner-directed entry generally considered among the worst in the franchise. Fox then tapped Simon Kinberg to helm the movie.
