This time past year, “Tomorrowland” was the top movie, bringing in about $41.7 million, followed by “Pitch Perfect 2” and “Max Max: Fury Road”, according to Entertainment Weekly.
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The anticipated showdown of the two big-budget films turned out to be little contest for 20th Century Foxs latest X-Men installment.
Other reasons for the film’s poor debut include film enthusiasts not being as excited for a new “Alice In Wonderland” film this time around and the hot weather which dissuades people from spending time inside a theater when they can be enjoying the sun.
It’s not exactly game over for Alice as Through The Looking Glass as the movie performed extremely well overseas. Scathing reviews combined with the domestic abuse charges brought by Amber Heard against Johnny Depp likely combined to keep potential moviegoers away from Alice Through the Looking Glass. She appeared in court with a bruise on her right cheek, saying he threw her mobile phone at her during a fight. Some fans called for a boycott of Alice.
Justin Chang in Variety mused: “Alice Through the Looking Glass is a movie for anyone who ever skimmed a passage of Lewis Carroll and thought, ‘This is great, but it could use a bit more ‘Terminator'”.
“Alice Through the Looking Glass” has all The Playing Cards stacked against it as it seeks to hold onto its head through the Disney sequel’s opening Memorial Day weekend.
The X-Men franchise landed at No. 1 on the chart, drawing 1,166,756 moviegoers over the May 27-29 weekend, according to the computerized box-office tally from the Korean Film Council. “We have embarked on a branded tent-pole strategy that makes big bets”.
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.
In that scenario, beating X-Men: Days of Future Past’s $90 million opening weekend would be a notable success, while coming anywhere close to Deadpool’s $132 million would be a glorious vindication worthy of a small parade.
Still, the film, made for $178 million, has already made $185.8 million internationally.
The film is directed by Bryan Singer, based on a story by Singer, Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris. No matter the critics take, it looks as though the X-Men franchise is alive and well in the world.
Fox domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson said he was “exceptionally pleased” with the results, and predicted that the film’s A-minus CinemaScore would set it up for repeat business. Its right on track with what our expectations were going in..
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Overall business over the weekend, according to comScore, was up about 5 percent from Memorial Day past year when Disney’s “Tomorrowland” bombed with $33 million. Boosting ticket sales were a handful of holdovers. Even with worldwide sales to date, Alice Through The Looking Glass is only at $93 million against a $170 million budget, meaning profitability will be low and any thoughts of future adventures are slipping down the rabbit hole. Analysts estimate the movie will reach $80 million by the end of the four-day holiday.
