The summer box office continues to be booming as the third superhero movie of the year, Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of the Future Past, starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman and a cast of thousands, opened on Thursday night and after making $8.1 million from Thursday previews, it’s estimated to have grossed $36 million on its opening day.
This is the fourth movie of the year to have an opening day north of $35 million after Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($36.9 million), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($35.1 million) and last week’s Godzilla ($38.4 million), and it’s likely to also be the fourth movie of the year to gross more than $90 million its opening weekend, with the added benefit of the Memorial Day holiday on Monday. Including the Monday holiday, “Days of Future Past” is definitely shooting to be one of the Top 5 biggest Memorial Day openers although it’s not likely to match the $122 million Memorial Day opening of X-Men: The Last Stand back in 2006.
Meanwhile, Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla had a huge drop after opening over $90 million last weekend. It took in an estimated $8.8 million on Friday, down a staggering 77% from its opening day, as we once again see a classic case of summer frontloading as fans rush out to see a movie opening weekend and then move onto the next big event movie a week later.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made $2 million on Friday and is looking likely to end up with total gross somewhere just below $190 million by Monday.
