The big news overseas wasn’t Angry Birds or Captain America: Civil War, but rather debut of X-Men: Apocalypse. The 20th Century Fox superhero sequel debuted in 75 markets on Wednesday, ten days ahead of its Friday domestic debut. And the film earned a whopping $103.3 million over the five-day weekend, topping 71 of said markets.
Exact comparisons to X-Men: Days of Future Past are tricky, as that film opened nearly all around the world (120 markets, including America and China) over the same Memorial Day weekend. But I’m going to try anyway. Said film topped $302m global by the end the four-day frame, including a $171.1m overseas cume. The film snared $37.7m in China alone over its weekend, making it at the time Fox’s biggest China bow behind Titanic 3D. That $171.1m figure became Fox’s biggest overseas bow ever back in May of 2014.
X-Men: Apocalypse, which stars Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Olivia Munn, Evan Peters, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Sophie Turner, and Rose Byrne, opened last Wednesday and expanded to 64% of the international marketplace this weekend. It opens in South Korea on Wednesday the 25th and China on June 3rd, along with America on the 27th and Japan way out on August 11th.
Among the highlights, this time out, were $10.5 million in the United Kingdom, $8.6m in Mexico, $6.5m in Brazil, $6.4m in Russia, $5.8m in France, $4.9m in the Philippines, and $4.8m in Australia. For the record, the pesky overseas deflation thing means that this $103m debut is about even with the comparative debut in said 75 markets for X-Men: Days of Future Past.
X-Men: Days of Future Past, which combined the new First Class cast with the older original trilogy cast in a time-travel spectacular, was something of a blowout compared to prior X-Men films. It a little less than X-Men: The Last Stand ($233m vs. $234m) in America (in 3D and eight years later), but went crazy overseas. The previous high for an X-Men film was the $282m overseas gross of The Wolverine in 2013, but X-Men: Days of Future Past ended up with $513m overseas two summers ago.
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For the record, the previous worldwide high for X-Men was the $457 million global gross for X-Men: The Last Stand. So if Apocalypse ends up a bit lower than Days of Future Past ($747m) or even the 2D and R-rated Deadpool ($762m), that’s not cause to panic. Dangers of “apples to oranges” comparisons regarding release date schedules aside (and deflation notwithstanding), let’s speculate!
A $103.3 million debut in 64% of the market for X-Men: Apocalypse could mean a $160m debut in 95% of overseas markets after next weekend (when the film will be playing in very nearly the entire world, as was Days of Future Past by the end of Memorial Day). Then, a similar multiplier to Days of Future Past (3x $171m = $513m) gives Bryan Singer’s X-sequel a $480m overseas cume, or 93.5% of the last film’s $513m overseas cume.
Toss in a $220 million domestic guestimate (could be more, could be less, but 93.5% of $233m is $218m), and we’re still looking at a $700m worldwide cume. Now that’s a lot of “if X is Y, then B is C” analysis, but said $103.3m overseas opening still points to a big worldwide total unless the film really doesn’t click here and abroad. Heck, a $180m domestic and a $400m overseas final still gets you to $580m worldwide.
But this is all fun with math and we’ll have a pretty good idea of where it’s heading when the “X-Men battle Apocalypse in the 1980’s” adventure opens in most of the rest of the world next weekend.
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