The studios continued to be bullish on their holiday estimates, with preliminary Monday numbers expecting strong business that may or may not be confirmed in final box office figures tomorrow. For now, the most optimistic film is HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony), expecting a mere 7% drop on Monday, with the older skewing NEIGHBORS (Universal) and MILLION DOLLAR ARM (Disney) forecasting less family business with respective declines of 26% and 29%. GODZILLA (Warners) is anticipating a 20% drop, while BLENDED (Warners), again looking to families, is looking for a gentler 15% slide. With one exception, none of the 4-day estimates significantly change where their movies were as of yesterday.
That exception, surprisingly, was X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (20th), which actually outperformed its 3-day estimate, earning $91.4M rather than the $90.7M the studio put up yesterday. That suggests strong word of mouth, and naturally 20th has upped its 4-day prediction to a high-end $111M (with a quite reasonable Monday drop of 25%), making it the 5th-biggest Memorial Day opening ever. (Although one of those 4 ahead of it is still X-Men: the Last Stand at $122.9M). In addition, X-Men continued to do huge business overseas, with $191M over 4 days–that’s already almost equal to the $225M The Last Stand made outside the US in its entire run, and not far from The Wolverine‘s $282.3M, which is the franchise’s highest overseas total to date. Worldwide, Days has $302M after 4 days.
With the aid of the holiday, X-Men‘s $111M is ahead of the 4-day totals for all the year’s other blockbusters: $101.2M for Captain America 2, $100.9M for Godzilla, and $96.8M for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Of course, things will come back to earth tomorrow, when sizable post-holiday drops can be expected.
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