The raw figures say that X-Men: First Class, Marvel’s latest extension of its mutant-superhero franchise, won the weekend with $56 million at the North American box office, according to early studio estimates. The film-long flashback — in which young Charles Xavier opens his school for the gift-abled and first locks wills with his turbulent future rival Magneto — launches what Marvel hopes will be a series as profitable as the first three X-Men films, from 2000 to 2006, and its 2009 prequel X-Men Origins: Wolverine, starring Hugh Jackman.
So is First Class a hit or a flop?
Like a mother scanning her child’s report card, a movie company knows that grades are a balancing act: achievement vs. expectations. X-Men’s parent studio, 20th Century Fox, had to be ecstatic that First Class received a Harvard-worthy 88 grade from the Rotten Tomatoes survey of critics’ reviews, and mildly pleased with the B-plus rating from the CinemaScore survey of people who saw the film opening day. And indeed, First Class did exceed the numbers that Fox had publicly predicted, which was that the movie’s opening-weekend gross would be somewhere between $45 million and $55 million. So good work, lad, for acing your assignment — where can we take you for a celebratory snack?
Or should First Class be sent to bed without supper? The movie’s $56 million was the puniest winning total of any of the year’s late-spring blockbusters . True, it suffered the smallest Friday-to-Saturday dip, 5%, of any of the five films in the X-Men series — but it had the smallest opening day, and thus a lower perch to fall from. First Class started afresh with a cast of attractive young actors, so it lacked the star quality of the previous pictures. But surely the star of the franchise is its title?
The movie’s revenue haul was also well below other industry predictions, most of which started at $60 million and bid higher. In his Friday forecast, for example, Box Office Mojo’s Brandon Gray pegged the weekend grosses of Hang II, Kung Fu 2 and Pirates 4 within a few hundred-thousand dollars each of today’s figures, but guessed that First Class’s take would be $69 million, or about 23% above today’s announced gross. In a recently robust movie season, when the domestic box office has rebounded from a five-month slump, $56 million for a $150 million film that cost another $80 million to publicize isn’t so hot. Overseas, First Class opened to $64 million in 76 territories; and superhero movies generally make their big stash overseas. Returns from abroad may be the determining factor in whether X-Men: First Class gets promoted to the next grade: a sequel for the prequel.
