Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past topped the Memorial Day weekend box office with an estimated $90.7 million for the 3-day Friday-through-Sunday period.  Fortunately, it appears that the controversy surrounding a civil lawsuit filed against Singer (see "Singer Won't Do Publicity for 'Days of Future Past'"), who as a consequence did not do any publicity for the film, had no effect on the movie’s box office.  Fox expects DOFP to finish the 4-day weekend with $110 million. 
 
Overseas the film is doing even better earning an estimated $171 million from debuts in over 100 countries including every major market except for Japan (May 30) and Spain (June 6).  With a worldwide total that is expected to top $281.1 million, DOFP pulled off the biggest opening in X-Men franchise history.  DOFP also dealt a body blow to last week’s winner Godzilla, which plunged a mighty 66% in spite of good reviews and generally good audience reaction.  But this wasn’t the biggest Memorial Day weekend in Hollywood history, since the total of the top 12 films was down a substantial 28.2% from the first 3 days of last year’s Memorial Day frame when Fast & Furious 6 won the day with a $97 million 3-day opening total.
 
While DOFP’s totals are impressive (especially the overseas numbers, since the X-Men franchise has never enjoyed the global popularity of Spider-Man or Batman), a good case can be made that DOFP’s debut was something of a mild disappointment, especially on the domestic side where, in spite of stellar reviews (an amazing 91% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes) and a time-traveling narrative that brought together a massive cast that included the actors from the original X-Men Trilogy as well as those from their younger counterparts in X-Men: First Class, DOFP opened well below the $100 million that many box office analysts had predicted.
 
Then there are the comparisons to the openings of previous X-Men films including X-Men: The Last Stand, which earned $102 million over the first 3 days of the Memorial Day weekend in 2006 (and $124 million for all four days), and The Last Stand did it without the benefit of the 3-D ticket price bump.  Actually if you adjust for inflation, DOFP is well behind X-2: X-Men United’s $85 million 2003 bow, and about equal to X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s $85 million opening in 2009.  Domestically DOFP will be hard pressed to match the inflation adjusted totals of X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand (both about $285 million in today’s ticket price dollars).  DOFP’s domestic debut suggests a natural comparison with Sony’s reboot of the Spider-Man franchise.  While Marc Webb’s first two Amazing Spider-Man movies haven’t done poorly, neither have they reached the domestic box office heights enjoyed by Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man trilogy. 
 
But on the other side of the equation, there is the undisputable fact that DOFP, like Webb’s Spider-Man films, is doing better worldwide as it benefits from the continuing growth in the international box office.  X-Men: The Last Stand had a very similar worldwide rollout in 2006 that netted just first weekend total of $204 million compared with DOFP’s $281.1 million.  Of course it is important to remember that the studios do not receive as high a percentage of foreign sales (Sony will get just $30 million of the $90 million ASM 2 has earned in China so far) as they do from those in North America where they get roughly half of the box office total.   DOFP will likely set a franchise record for revenue earned outside of North America, but as one of the most expensive films of the year so far with a $220 million production cost, the film still has a long way to go to reach profitability.
 
The good news for DOFP is that opening weekend audiences gave the film a solid “A” CinemaScore, the same grade earned by Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which has demonstrated solid “legs” since its debut in April.  Also DOFP won’t face any direct action movie competition until the original Tom Cruise science fiction film Edge of Tomorrow, which is based on the Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, debuts on June 6, and then it’s relatively clear sailing until Transformers: Age of Extinction opens in June 27, though DOFP will face a different sort of competition for its target audience when Seth (Family Guy) MacFarlane’s R-rated comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West bows next weekend.  Bottom line: DOFP opened well, but was expected to do better, so it will be interesting to see if it can manage to hit the $250 million mark in the domestic market.
 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): May 23-25, 2014
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	X-Men: Days of Future Past	$90,700,000	3,996	$22,698	$90,700,000	1
2	Godzilla	$31,425,000	3,952	$7,952	$148,773,000	2
3	Blended	$14,245,000	3,555	$4,007	$14,245,000	1
4	Neighbors	$13,946,000	3,266	$4,270	$113,626,000	3
5	The Amazing Spider-Man 2	$7,800,000	3,160	$2,468	$184,900,000	4
6	Million Dollar Arm	$7,093,000	3,019	$2,349	$20,628,000	2
7	The Other Woman	$3,675,000	2,154	$1,706	$77,773,000	5
8	Rio 2	$2,500,000	1,701	$1,470	$121,598,000	7
9	Chef	$2,260,000	498	$4,538	$3,548,000	3
10	Heaven is for Real	$1,950,000	1,720	$1,134	$85,750,000	6

Opening action movie blockbusters in adjacent weekends can be rough on one or both of the parties. Gareth Edward’s Godzilla, which crushed the box office last weekend, tumbled 66% in its second frame as it earned an estimated 3-day total of $31.4 million, which brings its domestic gross to $148.8 million.  Godzilla should roar to a 4-day total of around $39 million.  Overseas it appears that DOFP also had a major effect on Godzilla’s grosses, which were down considerably.  Godzilla is the only film of 2014 so far to debut over $90 million and not be based on a Marvel comic book.  It should be interesting to track Godzilla and DOFP in order to determine which film was the more front-loaded, and which will have greater staying power.
 
Debuting in third place was the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore comedy Blended, which bowed well below expectations earning an estimated 3-day total of just $14.2 million.  Blended was supposed to put Sandler back on top by teaming him with Barrymore, who starred opposite the ex-SNL star in The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates, but instead it posted the worst debut of any Sandler "PG-13" film (the actor has been featured in 13 comedies that have opened over $30 million).  Despised by critics, Blended posted just a 15% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but Blended did manage to score an "A-" CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences.  The problem could be the age of that audience--opening weekend crowds were 56% female and 71% over 25.
 
Meanwhile Universal’s Seth Rogen-starring comedy Neighbors dropped just 44% in its third frame, finishing right behind Blended with an estimated 3-day total of $13.9 million.  This week, the "R-rated" Neighbors became the 11th film to surpass the $100 million mark in 2014 so far.  Neighbors has done really well, but next week it faces direct competition from Seth MacFarlane’s "R-rated" western comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West.
 
Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 finished its fourth weekend in theaters at #5, earning an estimated 3-day total of $7.8 million and bringing its domestic total to just under $185 million.  ASM 2 looks like it might top out just over the $200 million mark domestically, but it is doing much, much better overseas where it has earned $489 million, bringing its current worldwide total to $673.9 million.
 
Disney’s quirky baseball picture Million Dollar Arm got off to a slow start, but the film that stars John Hamm (Mad Men) dropped just 32.5% in its second weekend as it earned an estimated 3-day total of $7 million, bringing its domestic total to $20.6 million.
 
Captain America: The Winter Soldier dropped out of the top ten for the first time in its eighth weekend of release as it earned $1.7 million for the first three days of the Memorial Day weekend.  Winter Soldier is now less than a million dollars behind The LEGO Movie, and should by next weekend be the #1 grossing film of 2014 so far.
 
Be sure to check back here next week to see if Seth MacFarlane’s Million Ways to Die in the West or Disney’s live-action Maleficent (starring Angelina Jolie) can manage to unseat Days of Future Past.
 
--Tom Flinn