As expected, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows was the #1 movie at the North American box office this weekend with a mediocre $35.3 million, a far cry from the amount earned by the first instalment back in 2014 (65.6 million). Its current worldwide cume is $69.3 million, so it has a lot of work to do if it hopes to come anywhere near the near $500 million made by its predecessor.
X-Men: Apocalypse meanwhile fell to #2 domestically with $22.3 million, a massive 66% drop which is just slightly lower than X-Men: The Last Stand's 67% fall a decade ago during the same weekend. With a current haul of $116.5 million, analysts now believe that the Bryan Singer helmed release will conclude its run with $165 million, a paltry amount just 5% better than the first X-Men in 2000 and less than Batman v Superman's opening weekend and what Deadpool made during its first five days.
Things are looking good overseas though, as X-Men: Apocalypse beat the Turtles this weekend with $84.4 million, a big chunk of which came from a solid $59 million debut in China. Now, the movie has racked up a foreign total of $286 million and passed $400 million worldwide. Chances are it will conclude its run with $650 million in total, a good result, but less than the studio wanted.
The biggest issue here is how the movie so badly underperformed domestically, and that will no doubt lead to Fox rethinking their approach to the franchise moving forward. What that will entail obviously remains to be seen, but be sure to let us know what you watched this weekend in the usual place.
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