Despite valiant efforts to right past wrongs, X-Men: Days Of Future Past was ultimately unable to undo the fateful events of May 26, 2006. It was a different time: Everyone was sharing cat videos, leggings were in, property values were declining, college students were being talked into loans they could never pay back, Putin was the president of Russia, and America still had troops in Afghanistan. In this atmosphere of dread and distraction, X-Men: The Last Stand began its $102 million ($118 million in today’s worthless dollars) opening weekend rampage, forever altering the course of X-Men box office comparisons to come.
Days Of Future Past earned $91 million in its first three days—which is a lot of money, but because we’re talking box office figures, we’ll pretend that it isn’t. That was more than enough to put it at No. 1, but it made for only the third biggest opening weekend in the franchise’s history, after The Last Stand and X2. Factoring in Monday receipts, the film’s U.S. gross for the long Memorial Day weekend was $111 million. Altogether, the movie has already made $300 million around the world. This is, again, a whole lot of money—even for a superhero movie—but less than The Last Stand.
The underperformer of the weekend was Adam Sandler’s latest family vacation, Blended, which took a distant third place, despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that it is markedly less shitty than his last few films. Its $14.3 million take ($18.1 million, if you count Monday) is about half of what Sandler’s movies average on their opening weekends, and is only $800,000 better than the opening weekend of Sandler’s 2012 flop That’s My Boy.
Like X-Men’s cast, the rest of the Top 10 was full of familiar faces. Godzilla trampled into second place, with a $31 million weekend take. There were you old friends The Amazing Spider-Man, Neighbors, and Million Dollar Arm, and even a cameo from Chef.
On the indie front, the big opening weekend winner was Alejandro Jodorowsky’s comeback The Dance Of Reality; though the movie opened in only two theaters, its $12,500 per screen average was second nationwide only to Days Of Future Past. Opening to higher overall grosses—but lower per-screen averages—were Words And Pictures and Cold In July. In a significantly expanded second weekend, A.V. Club favorite The Immigrant earned $442,000, which is impressive when you consider that the movie’s distributor has barely acknowledged its existence.
Somewhere, somehow, Heaven Is For Real earned another $2 million, bringing its total gross to $85 million, which is more than Goodfellas made in its theatrical run.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.