The studio knew Apocalypse wasn’t likely to match the $110.6 million debut of Singer’s Days of Future Past over Memorial Day weekend in 2014 considering it has a 48 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 92 percent for Days of Future Past.
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“X-Men: Apocalypse” easily topped the weekend box office in South Korea with more than 1 million viewers, blocking the local film “The Wailing” from holding onto the No. 1 position for the third straight week, data showed Monday. This was far below expectations of a $60 million weekend and a really rough start for a film that has a budget of $170 million. Alice 2 only earned $34.2 million over the four day weekend, a whopping 70% less than the first Alice movie’s $116 million opening weekend.
“Alice’s” opening is bad news for Johnny Depp, whose star has waned in recent years, its luster diminished by flops such as “Mortdecai” and “Transcendence”. So while the global market is the last, best hope for Alice Through The Looking Glass making any money, it’ll need a huge rally in order to save the day. “As the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) with the help of Professor X (James McAvoy) must lead a team of young X-Men to stop their greatest nemesis and save mankind from complete destruction”.
On Friday, as the film was hitting theaters, Amber Heard, Depp’s wife, was granted a restraining order after alleging the actor previously assaulted her.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore, said it was hard to quantify how much the fortunes of Disney’s Alice Through the Looking Glass turned on Friday afternoon when news of Heard’s allegations spread.
Aside from “Captain America”, another Disney film, the live action adaptation of “The Jungle Book” has added around $6 million to it, for an overall $338 million in domestic gross. In its fourth weekend, the Marvel superhero adventure passed Deadpool ($362.8 million) to become the year’s biggest film to date domestically with $377.2 million.
“‘X-Men’ destroyed Alice, no question”, said Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations.
“We’re very happy with this result as we introduce new characters in the X-Men universe”, said Fox domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson.
IT WAS a slow holiday weekend for celebrity silliness and for Alice Through the Looking Glass.
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Ultimately, though? We’ll just have to wait and see how it all plays out. Across 80 territories, the movie managed to make $65 million, in which $27.1 million of that alone was brought in from China.
