Box Office Midnight Math: X-Men: First Class grosses $3.4 million at 12:01am. It looks like a $62 million weekend.

Here we go again.  The first West-Coast shows have barely let out and we already have solid numbers from last night's midnight screenings.  For the record, 20th Century Fox's X-Men: First Class has pulled in $3.4 million in 12:01 showings.  As we all know if you've been reading over the last month or so, most big-studio pictures that play the midnight game can expect to gross between 4.5-6.5% of their weekend take in the midnight showings.  I only have midnight numbers for the last two entries in the series.  X-Men: The Last Stand opened with $5.9 million worth of midnight screenings, which kick-started a $102 million Fri-Sun Memorial day weekend and a $122 million holiday four-day stretch.  Using just the three-day numbers, X-Men: The Last Stand had a 5.7% midnight multiplier. X-Men Origins: Wolverine grossed $5 million worth of midnight tickets, which led to an $85 million opening weekend (a 5.8% midnight multiplier).


Obviously, since X-Men: First Class is the fifth entry in a geek-centric science-fiction comic book series, the film will likely be more front-loaded with midnight numbers than something like Fast Five (which only grossed 4.3% of its $86 million opening weekend in Thursday at 12:00am showings). Thor pulled down a solid 5% of its $65 million debut at midnight, and that seems to be a decent comparison.  On one hand, X-Men: First Class is an anticipated property, but on the other hand, it is getting terrific reviews and will likely have equally good word of mouth (unlike the last two entries of the series).  Also helping the Matthew Vaughn prequel/reboot is the fact that X-Men is a more general-audiences franchise compared to the comparatively niche-ish Thor.  So factoring in potential front-loading with a more mass-audience franchise, X-Men: First Class looks to earn between $57 million and $68 million over the three-day weekend, with $62 million looking like the likely number.  Of course, we'll know more soon enough...

Scott Mendelson

PS - if anyone has midnight grosses for the first two X-Men films, I would be much obliged.