Weekend estimates for the Memorial Day weekend box office are in, and things are looking, well, interesting. X-Men: Apocalypse is unexpectedly topping the weekend with an estimated $65 million through Sunday, and while that’s on pace to top out at between $75 million and $80 million for the weekend—by no means a terrible performance—it’s behind the opening grosses for X-Men: Days of Future Past, which landed on Memorial Day weekend in 2014, and below earlier suggestions that pegged Apocalypse’s opening as high as $100 million. While these numbers aren’t disastrous by any means, Apocalypse does come in at the lower end of opening weekends for the franchise as a whole, topping only the openings of 2000’s X-Men, the soft reboot X-Men: First Class, and 2013’s The Wolverine.

Reviews for Apocalypse have not been incredibly kind, which may have something to do with the so-so opening weekend here. Or perhaps audiences are already starting to feel something of a superhero movie fatigue this year given that the season started way back in February with Deadpool—which opened to an astounding $132 million—and continued with the massive-in-scope blockbusters Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in March and Captain America: Civil War in April. Indeed, while we haven’t even hit June yet, we’ve already seen some of the biggest films of the entire year, and Apocalypse came in at the tail end here. Perhaps folks felt like they didn’t need to rush out to see another superhero smackdown so soon after these other epics?


x-men-apocalypse-jennifer-lawrence-image
Image via 20th Century Fox

Whatever the case, Apocalypse’s performance is not franchise-ending by any means, and 20th Century Fox has a bevy of spinoffs and X-Men-centric films in the works, so we haven’t seen the last of the mutants. But it will be interesting to see how Apocalypse fares in the weeks to come. One more promising bit of news for Fox: the film is performing extremely well overseas, with its international total standing at $115 million for a worldwide gross of $180.4 million at the moment.

What is a disaster is Disney’s sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass. The follow-up to Tim Burton’s 2010 box office smash Alice in Wonderland is a bona fide bomb, netting an estimated $28.1 million so far for a 4-day total of around $35 million—a 70% drop from Alice in Wonderland’s opening weekend. The $170 million film had been expected to open around $55 million, but poor reviews coupled with a six year lag since the first film and a seriously bad week for Johnny Depp resulted in a low turnout, and now it may top out at $80 million overall compared to the $334 million domestic total of the first movie. The sequel is looking to fare even worse than last year’s Memorial Day release Tomorrowland, which was a disappointment at $42 million.

alice-through-the-looking-glass-johnny-depp-mia-wasikowska
Image via Disney

But while Alice is a sinking ship, Disney is in fine shape otherwise. The studio is about to pass $4 billion worldwide in record time thanks to the spectacular performance of Civil War (the year's highest grossing film), Zootopia, and The Jungle Book, the latter of which is showing incredibly strong legs, landing in the #6 spot for the weekend in its seventh week in release. The live-action/CG hybrid has amassed an astounding $880 million worldwide so far, and when coupled with the $1.108 billion and $992 million worldwide totals of Civil War and Zootopia, respectively, the sting of Alice Through the Looking Glass hurts a little less. Still hurts though.


Take a look at the full Top 10 estimates for the weekend below:

Rank

Title

Weekend

Total

1.

X-Men: Apocalypse

$65,000,000

$65,000,000

2.

Alice Through the Looking Glass

$28,112,000

$28,112,000

3.

The Angry Birds Movie

$18,700,000

$66,353,309

4.

Captain America: Civil War

$15,125,000

$372,610,948

5.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

$9,100,000

$38,336,580

6.

The Jungle Book

$6,967,000

$338,478,809

7.

The Nice Guys

$6,370,000

$21,733,672

8.

Money Monster

$4,250,000

$33,902,226

9.

Love & Friendship

$2,496,000

$3,489,548

10.

Zootopia

$831,000

$335,874,645


alice-through-the-looking-glass-image
Image via Disney
x-men-apocalypse-oscar-isaac
Image via 20th Century Fox
x-men-apocalypse-sophie-turner
Image via 20th Century Fox