With many things out of his control, Simon Kinberg takes blame for DARK PHOENIX poor performance.

DARK PHOENIX director Simon Kinberg spoke with The Business, giving his perspective on what could’ve caused the lackluster reception to his X-Men film. This was his first time directing a project in full, though he helped film pieces of Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse after Bryan Singer went AWOL from both sets during random moments of each productions.

Somehow Dark Phoenix earned the lowest domestic box office opening and Rotten Tomatoes score out of any X-film after three release date changes, negative press, unfair critic reviews, sketchy marketing, lack of public awareness and Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.

“I actually really like the movie, [and] I had an amazing time making the movie,” he said. “I’m here, I’m saying when a movie doesn’t work, put it on me. I’m the writer-director, the movie didn’t connect with audiences, that’s on me.”

So what’s the real reason for the film’s underperformance? “I mean honestly, there’s no way to know,” he said. “And that’s the thing that I think can drive people crazy and keep them up and be thinking about a movie’s failure years later. If the lesson you’ve learned is that you had the wrong date or you didn’t have good marketing–that’s not a lesson.”

Click here or use the player above to listen to the full discussion, including Kinberg’s feelings on X-Men’s likely reboot under the Disney machine and much more.