The $65M 3-day domestic opening estimate for X-MEN: APOCALYPSE has to be viewed as somewhat of a letdown in the eyes of Fox executives. When you compare Apocalypse's $65M with to the $90M 3-day total X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST or the $132M 3-day total DEADPOOL opened to in February, it's hard to not call it a bit of a box office disappointment.
X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is now projecting just under an $80M 4-day domestic holiday weekend haul which is less than the $85M opening prediction going into this extended 4-day weekend and much less than Days of Future Past's $110M 4-day tally just two years ago.
A lot of fan service went into X-MEN: APOCALYPSE for its longtime comic book readers, but the movie felt like you've seen it before. This could be a sign that franchise creatives like co-writer Simon Kinberg and/or director Bryan Singer need to move aside from these specific roles to bring in some fresh takes for the X-Men franchise moving forward.
Critics were not impressed as X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is the second worst scoring X-Men movie franchise on RottenTomatoes, even worse than X-MEN: THE LAST STAND. Even the RottenTomatoes audience score of 74-percent liking the movie is the sixth best audience score out of nine total X-Men movies. Only THE WOLVERINE, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE have had worse audience scores than Apocalypse.
Overseas, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE began releasing last weekend and it is bringing in strong results as the film has already amassed an estimated $250M worldwide.
The top two X-Men movie franchise films in the worldwide box office at Fox are DEADPOOL with $763M and X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST at $747M. It's hard to see Apocalypse topping either of these two films after this weekend's debut. Yet, it should easily land in third on Fox's all-time X-Men movie franchise list unseating current third place holder X-MEN: THE LAST STAND which is at $459M worldwide.
[All box office numbers are estimates sourced from BoxOfficeMojo.]
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