Every Memorial Day has its own tentpole movie release attached to it and this year it was Fox’s (NASDAQ: FOXA) X-Men: Days of Futures Past. Following the resurgence to the franchise that was X-Men: First Class, there was little doubt the Super-Hero pic would deliver. However, the news wasn’t as good for Warner Brothers, which saw its Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore comedy Blended get roughed up at what could be a particularly bad time.

The ranking
X-Men: Days of Futures Past
Finish: 1st place / Est. budget: $200 million / 3-day estimated total: $91 million/ 4-day estimated total: $110 million

The analysis
X-Men movies play extremely well at the box office and this one was no exception. Audiences loved that director Bryan Singer was not only returning to the franchise he helped launch, but that the film found a way to bridge the original trilogy with the hugely successful reboot from 2011. Now not only would fans get to see more of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence, but original stars Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan and Hugh Jackman were also brought back into the mix.

Box office wise this was a massive success, both domestically and internationally, as stateside the film earned around $91 million over the weekend with a total of $110 expected over the full Memorial Day weekend. Overseas the film did even better with $171 million, making it the studio’s best international release of all time, topping reigning champ Avatar. Past will also become the biggest opening film in the ­X-Men franchise and have the fifth biggest Memorial Day opening of all time.

Given the legal troubles surrounding Singer at the moment, this was a welcomed relief and a sign that audiences are smart enough to weed through the noise and make their own opinions.

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The future
This was the first of Fox’s summer films and it came a month after the surprise success of The Other Woman which proved to be one of the spring’s biggest sleeper pics. Next up for the studio is the eager anticipated literary adaption of young adult novel The Fault In Our Stars followed by DreamWorks Animation collaboration How To Train Your Dragon 2.

It’s a good time to be banking on Fox as both Stars and Dragon 2 are among the industry’s hottest projects and the fall is going to be even better with the adaptations of The Maze Runner and Gone Girl, both of which made a ton of money for the literary world. Fox also has a solid slate for the next two years with the tag team of X-Men and Dragon expected to be just as formidable when their latest installments return during the summer of 2016.

The ranking
Blended
Finish: 3rd place / Est. budget: $45 million / 3-day estimated total: $14.2 million/ 4-day estimated total $17.5 million

The analysis
This one hurts and it is going to stay with Adam Sandler for a little while. It is not by any stretch the end of his career or his box office bankability, but it certainly isn’t going to help. For Warner Brothers (a subsidiary of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX)), it likely won’t cost them much in the end because the whole movie only cost $45 million to produce (a steal nowadays), but the pairing of Sandler and Barrymore was supposed to be automatic given their past hits (The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates). Instead what happened was a flop that just barely outperformed one of Sandler’s career worst (That’s My Boy) by “this much.” It could also still slip to fourth place thanks to the still healthy comedy, Neighbors.

To be fair, this looks more to be a case of a tired The Brady Bunch-esque plot falling flat with audiences than people being tired of Sandler. No matter how you look at it, a four day total falling below $20 million for a summer comedy is a disappointment.

The future
Blended is an amazing example of box office irony. For Warner Brothers this time last week, executives were celebrating the success of Godzilla and now they are likely scrambling trying to spin poor numbers. That’s how quick the box office tides can change.

The difference here is that again the movie cost $45 million to produce so it’s not the job-endangering disaster of a pic that was the studio’s Jack The Giant Slayer or last summer’s Pacific Rim, but it is something to remember, especially with two game-changing pics on the horizon for the studio. If the pressure on Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow and Channing Tatum’s Jupiter Ascending wasn’t already at an all-time high, it is now.

Both of the films are not receiving the type of buzz that was hoped for when they were first green-lit and if they flop they will join a growing streak of misfires including Winter’s Tale and Transcendence, which overshadow the mega-success the studio had in its first-quarter with The Lego Movie and the surprise power of 300 sequel…Rise of an Empire.

With the Jersey Boys musical and Melissa McCarthy laugher Tammy still on the books as well, the studio has some buffers to help offset under-performing projects…but only to a certain point.

Year to year
Overall the box office was down 27% from last year when Universal’s Fast & Furious 6 drove over Warner Brothers’ final installment of The Hangover in what ended up being a one-sided race. Still both put up solid numbers and were buoyed by Fox’s stronger than expected Epic which earned a shocking $33 million of its own.

While some may look at the decline and say that’s where the industry’s headed, it’s not a fair comparison because of Epic’s epic weekend. That extra successful release helped skew the numbers and change the balance.

Next week two more films enter the mix, including Disney’s Angelina Jolie-fronted Maleficent and Universal’s Seth MacFarlane-created A Million Ways To Die In The West.

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