This Memorial Day weekend box office will be dominated by “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” The latest film could break all prior records for comic book movies. By bringing in the old characters with the new characters, it is expected to offer a little something for everyone.
As far as why this matters, Variety showed that sales should be $100 million, or even $110 million, according to early tracking. 20th Century Fox, a part of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. (NASDAQ: FOXA), is releasing the film. Keep in mind that the X-Men movie franchise already had about $2.3 billion in total box office sales globally.
While there are many blockbusters slated this for summer, it seems that the latest X-Men installment is being billed as one of the highest grossing films of the summer. The film’s production budget was said to be roughly $200 million, and it will be released at nearly 4,000 movie theaters.
As far as why this could be a record breaker for an X-Men debut, the record was almost $123 million on the debut “X-Men: The Last Stand” in 2006 (also a four-day weekend). Strong reviews have helped push this film as a contender for an X-Men record, although again that is still something that is just a possibility. Having Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart and the rest of stars in one film may be enough to give it a franchise record.
It appears that the biggest risk to the film’s own personal best record is that “Gozilla” has been doing well and is considered real competition. It reportedly had a $93 million opening weekend.
Twenty-First Century Fox shares are only 3% shy of a 52-week high at $34.59, but its market value is a whopping $77 billion. That makes it hard for any one title to move the needle. The company’s total revenues across all media properties was $27.7 billion in 2013, and Thomson Reuters is calling for revenues to be $31.3 billion for 2014.
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