According to early Friday estimates from ShowBIZ Data, X-Men: The Last Stand, the third chapter in the Marvel superhero franchise, has grossed $44.5 million in its first 24 hours, including midnight showings on Thursday night. It opened in over 3,688 North American theatres, which is fairly small by today’s standards, although it averaged roughly $12,000 per theatre, as fans of the previous movies flocked to see the movie as soon as possible.
Although it didn’t break the opening day record or one-day record held by “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith” which grossed over $50 million on its opening Thursday last year, the Brett Ratner-directed action flick has made more on its first Friday than any other movie. Previously, the biggest Friday opening was held by Spider-Man, which opened in May 2002, though last November’s “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” came very close to beating it.
X-Men: The Last Stand is certainly going to make a valiant effort to destroy the current three-day weekend record held by 2002’s Spider-Man with the added advantage of being a holiday weekend with most people out of work and school on Monday.
It’s almost guaranteed to top the previous Memorial Day records held by Steven Spielberg’s “The Lost World,” which grossed over $90 million its opening weekend, and “Shrek 2,” which earned more than $95 million over the holiday weekend in 2004.
Last week’s new movies, Sony’s “The Da Vinci Code” starring Tom Hanks, and DreamWorks’ “Over the Hedge” took significant plunges to make room for the mutant threequel with the Dan Brown adaptation grossing an estimated $10.2 million yesterday, barely a third of its opening day last week. “Over the Hedge” made roughly $7.6 million yesterday.
Check back on Monday to see how things turned out for the three movies.
Source: ShowBIZ Data
