“Alice Through the Looking Glass” scored 34 out of 100 on the review aggregator website Metacritic.
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Since Fox rebooted the franchise in 2014 with “X-Men: First Class”, the films have received excellent reviews across the board.
Overseas, “Alice Through The Looking Glass” took in $65 million in 43 markets, leaving it significantly short of the $1 billion grossed globally by its predecessor. Speaking of franchises under pressure, Alice Through The Looking Glass has started off in unsafe waters.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore, said it was hard to quantify how much the fortunes of Disneys Alice Through the Looking Glass turned Friday afternoon when news of Heards allegations spread.
Disney estimated that “Alice” would gross $35.6 million over the four-day weekend.
“We’re obviously frustrated and disappointed”, said Dave Hollis, Disney’s executive vice president for distribution. “We make these big bets and sometimes they really pay off. We took one here, but it did not do the kind of business we were hoping”.
He noted that the studio just passed $4 billion in record time, in part because it has decided to make fewer, but bigger-budgeted films.
Despite this, Screen Crush did note that “X-Men: Apocalypse” still has not performed as expected, although in this case it seems to have some company with another film that has surprisingly been expected to do so, but has not.
Fox might fare better: In its second weekend of global release, X-Men: Apocalypse added US$55 million to its haul. Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship landed in the domestic top ten, with a lovely $2.5 million opening on 493 screens, while Yorgos Lanthimos’s sublime The Lobster made $725,092 its third week on 119 screens, an 86.4 percent increase.
The film is directed by Bryan Singer, based on a story by Singer, Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris.
There were huge expectations from both the movies before release and it was expected to be a battle of two big budget movies over the Memorial Day weekend. Alice In Wonderland arrived to US$127 million in domestic ticket sales in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. “Captain America: Civil War” followed with $15.1 million in its fourth weekend.
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Total box-office returns in the USA and Canada for the holiday weekend were a little over $200 million, according to comScore.
