FRIDAY BOX-OFFICE: X-Men Predicted to Defeat Captain America

[MovieBob]

FRIDAY BOX-OFFICE: X-Men Predicted to Defeat Captain America

Fox's big-budget mutant movie could become 2014's new top opener

20th Century Fox bet big on X-Men: Days of Future Past, spending one of the biggest budgets in the studio's history to bring back the stars of the original series and the prequel First Class for a time-traveling relaunch of the popular but troubled Marvel franchise. That bet now seems to have paid off, as the superhero sequel is now expected to earn upwards of $100 million over the Memorial Day weekend; potentially usurping Captain America: The Winter Soldier as the highest-opening feature of the year (so far)/

Meanwhile, Warner Bros got some humbling news as last weekend's big winner, Gareth Edwards' reboot of Godzilla, is on track to drop steeper than expected - likely in the realm of 60-63%. That's the same kind of tumble Sony's Amazing Spider-Man 2 took in its second weekend, but with a lower budget and lower overall projections it won't be perceived as the same level of damaging for The King of The Monsters. Warners can also console itself with a strong third-place showing by the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore reunion comedy Blended, which is performing solidly within expectations.

Analysts are expecting further shakeups next weekend. Disney's ambitious Angelina Jolie star vehicle Maleficent is expected to be the box-office frontrunner - the first in what the Mouse House is hoping will be a series of live-action reworkings of their classic animated canon (Kenneth Brannagh's live-action Cinderella will bow in 2015). The wild-card is the difficult to predict performance of Seth McFarlane's R-rated western satire A Million Ways to Die in The West. The Family Guy mastermind scored a surprise smash with last year's Ted, but is also making his untested debut as a live-action leading man. Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson, Neil Patrick Harris, Amanda Seyfried and Sarah Silverman also star.


Source: Deadline [http://www.deadline.com/2014/05/box-office-x-men-fantastic-memorial-day-opener-blended-in-top-three-for-weekend/]

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[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I wonder if WB won't be reviewing their process for *ahem* Dawn of Justice, in the wake of big budget movies like like Godzilla and ASM2 failing to perform as expected.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

With the beloved Liam Neeson and Neil Patrick Harris starring plus McFarlane's status I think loads of fans and "nerds" will show up. I'm betting on a good first weekend for this.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

why are people still going to see adam sandler movies? and just why are we pretending drew Barrymore is still fuckable? her one notable career skill was being young and attractive now she's neither and they still try to play her off as if she is sexy... its creepy.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Disney's ambitious Angelina Jolie star vehicle Malificent is expected to be the box-office frontrunner

Ugh... I hope Maleficent bombs. This whole "gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale for the sake of doing a gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale" thing got tired even before that terrible Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. And this time they're doing it so that they can make one of the most awesome villains on their roster and make her into some kind of stupid anti-hero character? So they're doing a bad cliche of a movie premise in order to turn an awesome character into a bad cliche? "Ambitious" my ass.

 

[Story]

Well of course.
X-Men just came out and Captain American has been in theaters for over a month. I'm still hesitant to see the new X-Men movie, I'm kinda...I don't know X-Men over loaded at this point, same with Spider-Man.

 

[Sanunes]

I wonder if WB won't be reviewing their process for *ahem* Dawn of Justice, in the wake of big budget movies like like Godzilla and ASM2 failing to perform as expected.

Its really hard to say if Godzilla failed to preform as expected for we really don't know what they were expecting out of the franchise, unlike Sony with Spider-Man they are taking about making yearly films and such with the franchise and at this point unless there are new markets still to come I can't see they making much of a profit.

The other caveat is what they were really expecting to make on their second week going against a movie like X-Men, for that is a known entity that does well at the box office.

 

[Brian Tams]

Disney's ambitious Angelina Jolie star vehicle Malificent is expected to be the box-office frontrunner

Ugh... I hope Maleficent bombs. This whole "gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale for the sake of doing a gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale" thing got tired even before that terrible Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. And this time they're doing it so that they can make one of the most awesome villains on their roster and make her into some kind of stupid anti-hero character? So they're doing a bad cliche of a movie premise in order to turn an awesome character into a bad cliche? "Ambitious" my ass.

its also hilariously inaccurate when movie execs refer to them as "Gritty retelling of classic fairytails" when the movies themselves don't even come close to how dark the original fairy tales are.
Case in point, the Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. In the earliest versions of the tale, the Queen murders Snow White by clapping her in white-hot iron shoes. Didn't happen in the so called "dark retelling", now did it?

 

[Falterfire]

Well of course.
X-Men just came out and Captain American has been in theaters for over a month. I'm still hesitant to see the new X-Men movie, I'm kinda...I don't know X-Men over loaded at this point, same with Spider-Man.

You misread the article. It's not saying X-Men will beat Cap this weekend (that's obvious), it's saying that X-Men is looking to have a higher total haul this weekend than Winter Soldier had during its first weekend:

That bet now seems to have paid off, as the superhero sequel is now expected to earn upwards of $100 million over the Memorial Day weekend; potentially usurping Captain America: The Winter Soldier" as the highest-opening feature of the year (so far.)

 

[Story]

Well of course.
X-Men just came out and Captain American has been in theaters for over a month. I'm still hesitant to see the new X-Men movie, I'm kinda...I don't know X-Men over loaded at this point, same with Spider-Man.

You misread the article. It's not saying X-Men will beat Cap this weekend (that's obvious), it's saying that X-Men is looking to have a higher total haul this weekend than Winter Soldier had during its first weekend:

Ah, my mistake then.
It still wouldn't surprise me given how old the x-men brand is for movie goers compared to Captain America which as of late has only had two movies. X-Men had what? Seven or six? Feels like a lot.

 

[shintakie10]

Disney's ambitious Angelina Jolie star vehicle Malificent is expected to be the box-office frontrunner

Ugh... I hope Maleficent bombs. This whole "gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale for the sake of doing a gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale" thing got tired even before that terrible Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. And this time they're doing it so that they can make one of the most awesome villains on their roster and make her into some kind of stupid anti-hero character? So they're doing a bad cliche of a movie premise in order to turn an awesome character into a bad cliche? "Ambitious" my ass.

Perhaps you dont know what the actual classic fairy tales are, which is understandable since most people only know the disney versions, but those "gritty" remakes are nothing compared to the actual original stories. Horrifying things happen in the original stories to the point that I'm just utterly baffled that anyone at Disney was able to make the remakes that they did.

 

[Ruisu]

Well of course.
X-Men just came out and Captain American has been in theaters for over a month. I'm still hesitant to see the new X-Men movie, I'm kinda...I don't know X-Men over loaded at this point, same with Spider-Man.

You misread the article. It's not saying X-Men will beat Cap this weekend (that's obvious), it's saying that X-Men is looking to have a higher total haul this weekend than Winter Soldier had during its first weekend:

Ah, my mistake then.
It still wouldn't surprise me given how old the x-men brand is for movie goers compared to Captain America which as of late has only had two movies. X-Men had what? Seven or six? Feels like a lot.

But captain america still had a lot of the "hype train" from post-avengers movies to push it foward, X-men had nothing like that.

 

[Daymo]

I hope a million ways to die in the west does well, doesn't have to be spectacular but something that lets McFarlane keep making movies as he is a creative guy looking at the different tones of his tv shows.

 

[LobsterFeng]

I think Xmen chose most wisely when they took Memorial Day weekend. My entire family is planning to see it on Monday because we all actually have the day off, it wasn't worth coordinating our schedules for the other movies.

Also I was quite shocked to see how big the budget is for Days of Future Whatever. I'm sure it'll do very well but it really makes me wonder what Fox would've done if this failed.

 

[Saetha]

Disney's ambitious Angelina Jolie star vehicle Malificent is expected to be the box-office frontrunner

Ugh... I hope Maleficent bombs. This whole "gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale for the sake of doing a gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale" thing got tired even before that terrible Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. And this time they're doing it so that they can make one of the most awesome villains on their roster and make her into some kind of stupid anti-hero character? So they're doing a bad cliche of a movie premise in order to turn an awesome character into a bad cliche? "Ambitious" my ass.

Yeah, I'm getting tired of all the "dark and gritty" fairy tale stories, too. I don't even know where that bandwagon came from but God, I'm sick of everyone jumping on it. Not to mention the whole movie looks like a rip-off of Wicked, right down to the "Traditionally evil villain wasn't as evil or villainous as we thought" cliche. Ah, but it'll probably make a bunch of money because of all the people who mindlessly rave over anything with any similarities to Wicked and... well, it's Disney.

 

[tdylan]

But captain america still had a lot of the "hype train" from post-avengers movies to push it foward, X-men had nothing like that.

Captain America is still "new," and was a small cog in the big "Avengers" vehicle. Captain America is also more of a novelty, "B-List" franchise. The X-Men (as a whole) have been tier one for decades, and there movies (good & bad) are still recent in the collective memory. They also get the star power of Jean Luc Picard, Gandalf, and Katniss to play off of. Winter Soldier doesn't have nearly the star power.

I also don't think it's apples to apples. There's a good reason X-Men is opening on memorial day weekend. Opening on a holiday weekend certainly doesn't hurt.

 

[faefrost]

Disney's ambitious Angelina Jolie star vehicle Malificent is expected to be the box-office frontrunner

Ugh... I hope Maleficent bombs. This whole "gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale for the sake of doing a gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale" thing got tired even before that terrible Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. And this time they're doing it so that they can make one of the most awesome villains on their roster and make her into some kind of stupid anti-hero character? So they're doing a bad cliche of a movie premise in order to turn an awesome character into a bad cliche? "Ambitious" my ass.

its also hilariously inaccurate when movie execs refer to them as "Gritty retelling of classic fairytails" when the movies themselves don't even come close to how dark the original fairy tales are.
Case in point, the Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. In the earliest versions of the tale, the Queen murders Snow White by clapping her in white-hot iron shoes. Didn't happen in the so called "dark retelling", now did it?

I may be misremembering it, but I thought it was the dwarves "clapped the queen into white hot iron shoes and made her dance until she was dead"?

 

[Brian Tams]

Disney's ambitious Angelina Jolie star vehicle Malificent is expected to be the box-office frontrunner

Ugh... I hope Maleficent bombs. This whole "gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale for the sake of doing a gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale" thing got tired even before that terrible Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. And this time they're doing it so that they can make one of the most awesome villains on their roster and make her into some kind of stupid anti-hero character? So they're doing a bad cliche of a movie premise in order to turn an awesome character into a bad cliche? "Ambitious" my ass.

its also hilariously inaccurate when movie execs refer to them as "Gritty retelling of classic fairytails" when the movies themselves don't even come close to how dark the original fairy tales are.
Case in point, the Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. In the earliest versions of the tale, the Queen murders Snow White by clapping her in white-hot iron shoes. Didn't happen in the so called "dark retelling", now did it?

I may be misremembering it, but I thought it was the dwarves "clapped the queen into white hot iron shoes and made her dance until she was dead"?

You know what, I think you're right. Its been a while since I read it (it was part of a summer reading list for AP Lit back in high school). Either way, that's still a pretty gruesome end for a fairy tale, and something that Snow White & The Huntsmen doesn't even come close to.

 

[Agayek]

Yeah, I'm getting tired of all the "dark and gritty" fairy tale stories, too. I don't even know where that bandwagon came from but God, I'm sick of everyone jumping on it.

It came from Grimm's Fairy Tales [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales], which in turn came from the classical folklore that all the stories were based on.

Pretty much every one of the "classic" fairy tales you're familiar with originally came in the form of "evil showed up, and everyone died horribly". They were cautionary tales against all sorts of things, and there were no happy endings in them.

 

[Mangod]

Disney's ambitious Angelina Jolie star vehicle Malificent is expected to be the box-office frontrunner

Ugh... I hope Maleficent bombs. This whole "gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale for the sake of doing a gritty retelling of a classic fairy tale" thing got tired even before that terrible Kristen Stewart Snow White movie. And this time they're doing it so that they can make one of the most awesome villains on their roster and make her into some kind of stupid anti-hero character? So they're doing a bad cliche of a movie premise in order to turn an awesome character into a bad cliche? "Ambitious" my ass.

I wonder how many of these people have read Rich Burlew's Start of Darkness? I don't want to like Maleficent, I don't want to sympathise with her. I want to be able to continue loving to hate her without any excess "oh-no-she-was-actually-good-once" bagage.

Why is it that a webcomic writer can figure this stuff out when paid corporate executives can't?