Box Office Preview: X-Men to take Last Stand?

By Scott Rosenberg Jun 2, 2006, 9:29 GMT

Will X-Men be taking its Last Stand next week?

Expanding 24 screens – putting it on 3,714 screens, Fox is hoping it will hold up against Universal’s, ‘The Break-Up’ opening today (Friday, June 2nd) on 3,067 screens.

The Jennifer Aniston/Vince Vaughn starrer has garnered public attention due to the stars’ personal relationship.

Hollywood’s number crunchers compare Break-Up’s opening to March’s “Failure to Launch’ which took in 24.4 million opening weekend.

But the crunchers, say the key factor will be the male audience – with the movie “tracking” well with females (it is a romantic comedy after all) no one knows male reaction – even though Vaughn is a draw for the male viewer.

Last summer, Vaughn’s ‘The Wedding Crashers’ opened to $33.9 million in July before a long run that brought its take to over $200 million.

President for distribution at Universal, Nikki Rocco is quoted as saying “I would hope we could get the Vince Vaughan fans as well as the romantic comedy audience.”

Fox, meanwhile, is bracing for ‘X-Men – The Last Stand’to take a sizable drop this week following a trend where pic declined each day over last week’s holiday weekend Saturday – Monday from its opening of  $45.5 million last Friday.

Expected third place race will be ‘The Da Vinci Code’ vs ‘Over the Hedge’ - ignoring new releases 'District B13' (96 screens), Lions Gate's 'Peaceful Warrior ' (10 screens) and IFC's 'Coastlines' (1 screen).

Both pictures opened two weeks ago and while Da Vinci is picking up 3 screens going out this week on 3,757 screens - Hedge is losing 100 screens, but still playing on more screens than the Tom Hank’s starrer, 3993 screens.

Sill in limited release but expanding to 77 screens is Al Gore’s global warming documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

Debuting on 24 screens is the first South Korean thriller released by a US major distributor, Paramount Classics.  'Typhoon' was acquired by Dreamworks last year.

Boxoffice Mojo predicts that next week (June 9th) Pixar’s animated ‘Cars’ will open on 3,800 screens while Fox’s ‘The Omen’ will open on Tuesday (6/6/06) on 2,600 screens.