X-Men: Days of Future Past earned $36 million on its first day of release, a total that includes $8.1m worth of Thursday previews. It feels curmudgeonly to be critical about a $36m opening day and probable $110m four-day debut. But the question becomes exactly how 20th Century Fox viewed this seventh picture. Was it merely intended to improve upon the box office fortunes of the last three installments, or was the 'franchise all-stars to the rescue' super-sequel meant to shoot the 14-year old franchise to towering new box office heights? If it's the former, then the picture will certainly be a success. But in terms of relative comparisons to the X-Men franchise as a whole, it's coming up somewhat short.
The film's $36 million Friday is the third biggest of the year, behind Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($36.9m) and last weekend's Godzilla ($38.4m) and just ahead of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($35.1m). If the film follows the relative weekend patterns of those three big openers, the Fri-Sun figure for X-Men: Days of Future Past will be between $87m (2.4x) and $94m (2.6x). However, the X-Men franchise is not known for strong weekend multipliers. X-Men: The Last Stand opened on this weekend back in 2006 to a whopping $102m Fri-Sun and $122m Fri-Mon after a $45m opening Friday. All three figures were very near the top of the record books. If X-Men: Days of Future Past performs like X-Men: The Last Stand, it gets $82m for the Fri-Sun debut and $98m for the Fri-Mon debut.
Now if you're playing the 'adjusted for inflation' game, the Fri-Sun debut of X-Men: The Last Stand (not accounting for 3D upcharges) would be around $125 million today, while the X2 debut would be around $112m and the opening of X-Men Origins: Wolverine would be around $90m. Even the $54m debut of X-Men back in 2000 (which was the biggest debut ever for a non-sequel at the time) would be around $80m today. Again, the question becomes whether or not X-Men: Days of Future Past, which brings back Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McKellen for a time-travel story that also involves James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence, was supposed to scale new heights for the franchise or merely stem the relative bleeding domestically.
Point being, if Fox was looking for a Fast Five-type breakout success, it's unlikely at this point that they will get it. I don't necessarily like poo-pooing a film's long term prospects after a single day in theatrical release, but there is plenty of precedent. X-Men: The Last Stand earned just 1.88x its four-day figure overall, ending its domestic run with $235 million. Most Memorial Day openers aren't much better, with X-Men: The Last Stand, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Hangover part II, Fast & Furious 6, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (the top five Memorial Day openers of all time) doing around 1.85x-2.2x their 4 or 5 day debut figures. It would seem at this juncture that the absolute best-case scenario is that X-Men: Days of Future Past ends the weekend with $115m over four days and ends its domestic total with $265m domestic (2.3x). That's a solid figure, especially if the film picks up steam overseas, but it's also below the $285m adjusted-for-inflation totals of X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand.
The absolute nightmare scenario, and I'm not outright saying this is how it's going to go, is that X-Men: Days of Future Past performs exactly like X-Men: The Last Stand, which means it ends the four-day weekend with $98 million and then does just 1.88x its opening figure for a domestic total of $184m. Again, if this were the first entry in a franchise, this would count as a win regardless of how it plays out. But Fox was arguably expecting that the return of Bryan Singer and the returning of the old cast members would cause X-Men: Days of Future Past to play like a proverbial X-Men 4, with the inflated budget to match. Like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, with great budgets come great expectations. Now the film is opening overseas in a bunch of markets this weekend as well, so we'll have a better idea of how it's shaping up tomorrow.
The other major release was a somewhat shocking wiff. Warner Bros. (a division of Time Warner) dropped the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Blended as a form of counter-programming, but everyone who didn't see X-Men went to see Warner Bros.' Godzilla or Universal's Neighbors (which crossed $100 million yesterday) instead. Blended opened with just $4.41m, outright terrible for a mainstream Adam Sandler comedy. The film will be lucky to cross $18m by Monday. The good news is that it cost just $45m to produce, meaning $50m here and $50m overseas will put the film in eventual break-even form.
But this is one of Adam Sandler's worst domestic debuts as a headliner ever. It will end the Fri-Sun frame with around $13.5m, or about what That's My Boy debuted with two summers ago. That one was a vulgar R-rated comedy. Blended was supposed to be a safe film, one that reignited Sandler's box office mojo by re-teaming him with his Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates co-star. Even in an era of the declining movie star, Adam Sandler has been among the most consistent draws for a $35-$40m debut when he does PG-13 mainstream comedies. This is pretty grim news for the star, even if the film is cheap enough to eventually make its money back.
In holdover news, Godzilla dropped a sharp 77% from last Friday, earning $8.8 million yesterday and bringing its domestic cume up to $126m. That's a harsh drop, even with competition from X-Men, but the film will still end the frame with its $160m budget within reach. It will also, for what it's worth surpass the $136m domestic total of Roland Emmerich's Godzilla today. And Gareth Edwards's monster mash started the weekend with $220m worldwide, so a new cume of over $300m is all-but-certain. It's not quite the word-of-mouth sensation that some hoped, but with a likely final domestic total of around $235m, it's still a big hit. Marketing Does Matter.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 earned $2 million today, bringing its cume to $179.1m. The Sony sequel will, by today, finally cross the $180m domestic mark, which is what Spider-Man 2 earned in six days back in 2004. Mom's Night Out earned another $235k yesterday. Sony isa projecting a $1.2m four-day weekend and a $9.2m cume and who am I to argue? Heaven Is For Real is expected to have $2.5m for the holiday frame, giving it a new cume of $86m.
Walt Disney's Million Dollar Arm earned $1.82 million yesterday, giving it a current total of $15.35m. It will pull around $6.5m for the Fri-Sun frame. At just $25m, the Jon Hamm vehicle may just break even if it can do even a little overseas business. Finally, Jon Favreau's Chef expanded to 498 theaters and grossed $562,000 night. It is on track to earn around $2.8m for the four-day frame, which would bring its domestic cume to $4m.
That's it for today. Join us tomorrow for more on X-Men and Blended, plus a somewhat deeper look into the holdovers.
Post By http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2014/05/24/box-office-x-men-days-of-future-past-earns-36m-on-friday/
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