Not only bizarre, but demonstrably wrong. The 777X has ~3 times the number of orders at this point it's development (the original 777 had a little over 100 orders prior to first flight, and oh by the way those orders were dominated by just a few operators).
It depends how you interpret the numbers. The 787 has set a ridiculous benchmark for the number of orders received even before roll-out. If you compare how many orders Boeing received for the "conventional" 777 familiy in the last 3 years (around 150) and how many 777X orders they received in the last 3 years (30) it looks like airlines are not especially keen to buy the new, larger model... Yes, there is a solid backlock from the program start phase and a few operators, but there is no continuous strong demand from the world community. The number of operators interested in high capacity aircraft might be fading.
In the last 10 years, around 600 77W were ordered at a relative constant rate, in the last 5 years 326 777X have been ordered with only 10% of those in the last 3 years. It might be a general change in airline policy (back to realistic numbers for an aircraft which has not even been rolled out...), but it clearly is not selling "3 times better" than the conventional 777 so far.
This may be a duplication of the A380 sales, 190 were ordered by the time of the first delivery, only another 140 were ordered in the 10 years after. So for the 777X we may see another 200 ordered after first flight for the few high capacity routes, while we may see thousands of 787 and A350 ordered for all the routes where a higher frequency with smaller aircraft suits the end-customer needs and airport capabilities much more.