A Geeky Viewpoint

X-Men: Apocalypse opens on May 27, lets take a quick look at expectations in the Box Office.

It needs to be noted the film opens on Memorial Day Weekend, a four day weekend which makes predications a bit fickle as it generally messes with comparable films.

Comparable films open between $86 M and $121 M with an average of $97 M for the three day weekends and $115 for a four day weekend.

The film is opening against Disney's Alice Through the Looking Glass starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter which is not a direct competitor but very close competitor when it comes to market share.

The film had solid hype and was well received in the early stages of production however concerns on the look of Apocalypse seem to stall the hype machine for extended periods of time.    Initial reviews where pretty negative, on May 5 the first wave of reviews on rottentomatoes.com put the film at 38 and metacritic at 44.   However subsequent reviews have been much better on May 14th the score on rottentomates.com had increased to 58 and metacritic to 51, which is a fairly substantial jump for both considering the number of reviews.  
What is more interesting is the current scoring of audience reviews, the film is actually the highest rated film in the Franchise.   Yes it is early, but the film is tracking about 5% higher in early fan reviews than it predecessors at this same juncture.

An interesting side note, the length of the film has changed.   On May 1st the film was listed as 2 hours 16 Minutes, in the past few days many sites now list the movie as 2 hours 24 minutes.   It leaves the question on whether all reviewers saw the same cut of the film.

X-Men franchise saw new life with the release of Deadpool earlier this year.   The irreverent R-Rated film set a new standard with $132.4M opening weekend.    Many of suggested a potential Deadpool bump similar to the Avengers bump that all the Marvel films saw.

Four day Memorial day Weekends generate between $215M and $320 M dollars when adjusted for inflation.   Two tent poles released on the same Memorial Day Weekend the numbers are from $275 to $320 M.   If we assume the standard 70% for the tent poles this gives us a $192 M to $225 M for the films.   That in theory suggests $115 M to $135 M on the four day for X-Men on the four day and $93 to $109 M on the three day.

However I think competition on opening weekend and potential holdovers push the numbers down domestically.  

$87 M Opening Weekend ($110M Four Day)
$217 M Domestic Total
$570 M International Total
$787 M World Wide.