Friday Report: 'X-Men' Kicks Off Holiday Weekend with $36 Million
X-Men: Days of Future Past opened strong on Friday, and will almost certainly earn over $100 million over the holiday weekend. Meanwhile, Adam Sandler's Blended fell short of modest expectations.

The seventh installment in the X-Men franchise earned an estimated $36 million on Friday. That's about on par with recent superhero movies Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($36.9 million) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($35.2 million). Unfortunately, it's significantly lower than X-Men: The Last Stand's $45.1 million debut on the same day eight years ago.

The movie is receiving strong reviews (91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and good word-of-mouth ("A" CinemaScore), so it should hold up better than The Last Stand. If it plays like last year's Fast & Furious 6, it will wind up just below $110 million for the four-day frame.

In second place, Godzilla plummeted 77 percent to $8.8 million. That's a horrible drop on par with notoriously front-loaded movies like Cloverfield (76 percent) and Ang Lee's Hulk (77 percent). For the four-day weekend, Godzilla could earn less than $40 million.

Blended opened in third place with an estimated $4.4 million. That's a terrible start for an Adam Sandler movie: it's less than half of Jack and Jill's $9.8 million, and is even lower than 2012 flop That's My Boy ($4.6 million). The movie should play to families over the long weekend, though it's likely that it winds up below $20 million anyway.

Neighbors fell 51 percent to $4.2 million. In the process, it passed $100 million, and has also now earned more than This is the End. Meanwhile, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 fell 56 percent to $2 million.

4-Day Weekend Projections

1. X-Men - $112 million

2. Godzilla - $39 million

3. Blended - $19 million

4. Neighbors - $18 million

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Related Chart:

Grosses for Friday, May 23, 2014