Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past has unquestionably been a huge success, and is currently ranked as the highest grossing X-Men movie worldwide, but there is a very important number one spot it has not yet achieved within the franchise: biggest domestic release. The movie has made $233,666,000 to date, but that number still falls short of $234,362,462, the total that Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand managed to bring in back in 2006. While you may think that the race is over, considering that Days of Future Past is entering its 16th week of release, the reality is that 20th Century Fox isn't giving up yet. Instead, the studio has given the movie a small but significant push in the last couple weeks, presumably in an attempt to try and claim a very important record for the marketing department.
MoviePilot first picked up on the move, noticing that Fox made a pretty big bid over the Labor Day weekend to try and get a few more audience members in the theater to see X-Men: Days of Future Past. At its widest release point, back in late May and Early June, the latest X-Men movie was in just over 4,000 theaters, but obviously that number has severely shrunk as weeks have gone by. By the time the August 22nd-24th weekend rolled around, the title was only being shown on 188 screens nationwide, and made a tiny $146,406. For the recent holiday weekend, however, Fox decided to push prints of their blockbuster in 606 addition screens - and the strategy seemed to work. By September 1st, the comic book film brought in an extra $592,985, meaning that it is now just $696,463 away from beating The Last Stand.
One can understand why this milestone would be an important one for 20th Century Fox. The studio has X-Men: Apocalypse coming out in just two short years, and there is an advantage in being able to say that X-Men: Days of Future Pastwas the all-around number one film in the franchise's history. Additionally, those who have seen Bryan Singer's movie know that the film actively resets almost all of the series' continuity, and a big part of that is eliminating "mistakes" like X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To have the film completely eliminate those dysfunctional predecessors at the box office would be a nice feather in its cap in its "reboot" position.
At this stage, the big question becomes whether or not X-Men: Days of Future Past still has the gas in its engine to pass The Last Stand on the leaderboard. Days of Future Past will only be in 312 theaters this weekend, a 482 theater drop from last week, and f previous weeks are an indication, then it's possible that the film could be domestically #1 in two weeks. I wonder how Brett Ratner would feel about that situation...
