This summer has been host to some rather impressive Thursday night showings, the most impressive of which was (naturally) Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which passed around the shield to collect a rather neat $10.2 million. X-Men: Days Of Future Past did not best that number, but what it did manage to do is rank as the biggest late-night opening for an X-Men film, beating the previous record set by X-Men 3: The Last Stand.
Variety shows Bryan Singer's return to the X-Men franchise as having an $8.1 million night at the races, which trumps X-Men 3: The Last Stand's $5.9 million figure from back in 2006. With the Brett Ratner-directed film still holding the franchise record of $234 million in total international grosses, this could be an indicator that this film is poised to become the new ruler of the roost. Compared to the other Thursday openings this season though, the numbers begin to tell a different story.
After Captain America: The Winter Soldier crushed it at the beginning of April, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 brought home $8.7 in Thursday showings at the beginning of May, which would only be beaten by Godzilla's $9.3 million Thursday debut. While it's not even close to being May's lowest grossing Thursday premiere, which belongs to Universal's Neighbors, it is the lowest out of a batch of films that are marketed to the same four quadrant demographic. While the Thursday battle may not look too rosy, the ever important metric of critical evaluation has been giving the series it's best numbers yet.
Rotten Tomatoes has a freshness rating of 93% for X-Men: Days Of Future Past, which is better than its predecessor (and previous series Rotten Tomatoes champion) X-Men: First Class. With an 87% freshness rating, Matthew Vaughn's reboot tied with Singer's first sequel X-Men 2: X-Men United in the eyes of the critics, who think that the franchise is once more in good hands. Which is good, because X-Men: Days Of Future Past is being predicted to have a weekend that surpasses $100 million. In the best case scenario, the film could outdo X-Men 3: The Last Stand's record opening of $122 million. Unfortunately, with a competitively low Thursday night opening and a franchise that's still on the mend, there's still a chance this could go the way of the Spider-Man and under perform right out of the gate. With the fan buzz and the amount of critical praise behind the film, it looks like Thursday was just a warm up for a weekend that will go down in franchise history.
X:Men: Days Of Future Past is currently running in theaters across 100 countries at this very moment. If you're reading this on your phone before the movie, please don't spoil the box office results for the rest of the crowd. Also, remember to stay for the X:Men Apocalypse credits tag.
