X-Men: Days of Future Past opened to $90 million from Fri-Sun, and seems poised to bring in about $107 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend. That's just slightly less than X-Men: The Last Stand, back in 2006 over the same holiday, which could be considered a bit disappointing for 20th Century Fox, given all the hype directed at this one. But the X-Men movies look to have a definite ceiling no matter who's in them, at least in the United States. Worldwide it's a completely different story, as DOFP has already made $171 million overseas for a $261 million worldwide total. Given that no X-Men movie has ever grossed even half a billion worldwide before, that's pretty astonishing, and it also means that any superhero movie these days is pretty much guaranteed a gigantic overseas total, no matter what it is. DOFP was incredibly well-reviewed (91% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and got an "A" Cinemascore, so it may hold better than the typical X-Men movie domestically, but we'll see.
The other new release this week bombed hard, as the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore comedy Blended fell flat with just $14 million. It got the usual terrible reviews for an Adam Sandler movie, but his comedies are normally bulletproof in that area and he can still bring in $30-40 million openings with stuff like Grown-Ups 2. Not so with this one, despite the reunion with his best co-star, the only person he's ever had any chemistry with onscreen. Could the days of Adam Sandler's reign finally be over? One can only hope. Last week's blockbuster Godzilla fell a surprisingly steep 66% for $31 million this weekend, meaning the word of mouth on this movie was pretty harsh, but it's still likely to make at least $200 million in the end. The rest of the top five was filled out by Neighbors ($117 million total) and Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is another film that may have fell short of predictions in the U.S. but is a monster hit overseas, speaking to the troubling irrelevance of quality in foreign markets when it comes to action and franchise movies. That's an unfortunate trend.
Top 5:
- X-Men: Days of Future Past- $90.7 million
- Godzilla- $$31.4 million
- Blended- $14.2 milliion
- Neighbors- $13.9 million
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2- $7.8 million
In limited release, Chef expanded to more theaters this weekend, earning $2.2 million for a total of $4.3 million, while Heaven is For Real has now grossed an amazing $86 million total. Next week it's Angelina Jolie's Maleficent and Seth MacFarlane's One Million Ways to Die in the West. See you then!
