Xstatic! X-Men First Class BO Takings: Weekend 2 & 3

So the US Box Office weekend 3 numbers are in!

Here's what the current US Box Office Top 5 looks like:
1. Green Lantern $52,685,000
2. Super 8 $21,250,000
3. Mr. Popper's Penguins $18,200,000
4. X-Men: First Class $11,500,000
5. The Hangover Part II $9,635,000
(Just FYI, Kung Fu Panda 2 fights for the no. 6 spot with $8,700,000 while Captain Jack Sparrow has sailed down to no. 8 with a booty of $6,236,000).

According to Box Office Mojo X-Men: First Class accumulated this $11 mil+ with it being screened at 3,375 cinemas across the US. This is 317 screens less than those of weekend 2. The Top 5 for weekend 2 is as below:
1. Super 8 $35,451,168
2. X-Men: First Class $24,128,986
3. The Hangover Part II $17,667,329
4. Kung Fu Panda 2 $16,543,166
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides $10,945,764

So all those articles that were popping up all over the Net wondering if Super 8 could really upstage the First Class act by the X-Men got their answer- It did. But XFC still sat pretty at the number 2 spot.



I'm guessing it's the movie's studio (in this case Fox) that decides in how many cinemas a movie will screen. After seeing the tremendous response for the flick in Weekend 1 the number of screening theaters increased from 3,641 in weekend 1 to 3,692 for the next, enabling XFC get a cool $25 mil!

Though you can read about it in detail in this post, here's just a reminder about the first weekend takings:
1. X-Men: First Class $55,101,604
2. The Hangover Part 2 $31,381,234
3. Kung Fu Panda 2 $23,887,914
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides $17,954,603
5. Bridesmaids $12,040,875

So there you have it guys! Our beloved X-Men First Class has totally netted in $119,925,000.

The movie was officially made on a budget of $160 million. But, they did receive up to $20 million back from tax cuts or breaks for filming overseas, etc., making the final budget around $140 million. And that's why you may find the budget figures fluctuate from article to article online.

You guys can scrutinize the Weekend 1, Weekend 2 & Weekend 3 figures for X-Men First Class & the other movies it had to battle all thanks to Box Office Mojo! Also special thanks to the 1 Million to save WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN Facebook group for the heads-up!

Wanna watch XFC in HD anytime you want at home?? Pre-order your Blu-ray &/or DVD today!

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Xcite! X-Men Destiny Video Game

X-Men Destiny is the much talked-about upcoming game that's being released in September 2011 by Activision. However this time Beenox is not at all involved in the production like it was for the last few games involving the X-Men (namely X-Men Legends, X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse & Marvel: Ultimate Alliance). This time around Silicon Knights is currently developing the game. They are the same guys who brought you Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes amongst others...

Another thing that makes this game unique is that you don't play any of the popular X-Men characters, but rather you choose a character from three original mutant characters created JUST for this game! The first character is Aimi Yoshida, a 15 year old Japanese girl who was smuggled to San Francisco from Japan by her parents to avoid incarceration in a mutant camp. Check her out below...



The second character is Grant Alexander, an American student from Georgia who dreams of becoming a professional footballer. Finally we have Adrian Luca, who was a member of the Purifiers (an anti-mutant group) until his powers emerged. Both their pics are below.





However the sad news (for me at least) is that I'll not be able to play the game as it is only releasing on the PS3, Wii, Xbox 360 & Nintendo DS! *sniff, sniff* T_T Of course that doesn't stop me from sharing the news with the rest of the X-fans across the world!

You'll can watch the video below to see which characters are gonna be in the game.



So are you looking forward to this? Or are you loathing the fact that none of the famous staple X-Men characters are playable by you, except the 3 characters featured at the end...?

UPDATE: IGN has some extra news for us, with promises of more to come soon! The basic points are:
*It's gonna be an RPG.
*Northstar may also play a role in this game (but just how important he is isn't clear).
*You can customize the powers of your chosen character & can expand & develop their powers too. You can also change costumes.

UPDATE (20/7): Excited?? If you pre-order the game now for PS3/Xbox 360, you'll get an early unlock of Emma Frost Suits for your 3 main characters:

^Snazzy eh? These will grant aditional abilities to your characters! Click the suitable link below to learn more:

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X-names...What the heck do they mean??

Looking for the meaning of words in a dictionary is soo passe! lol Nowadays it's Dictionary.com FTW! :D

That's precisely how I landed on this nifty article that they had featured on their main page (in honor of X-Men First Class of course!). Pretty rad idea...I mean, it being an online dictionary, what better way to cater to the X-appetite (that is bound to grow after watching XFC) than providing us with meanings of the X code-names! I mean until I saw this page I never even knew that "Magneto" was ACTUALLY a word! I just thought it was the word "magnet" with an "o" added at the end lol!



So check out the link & brush up on your X-vocab! You won't believe how different the personalities &/or  powers of some X-Men are from the meanings of their names!You can see the definitions in list-form, as flashcards or even play a quiz to test your knowledge of the names!

And when we talk about the X-codenames, I think we all think about that awesome scene from X-Men First Class where they choose they aliases! It was precisely what I was talking about when I spoke about the "camaraderie shown between the characters..." in my review for X-Men First Class.

Watch the awesome scene below. And if this video turns out to be some sorta spoiler to any of you guys cos you haven't watched the movie yet, I just have two words to say to you...Why not?! ;P :D

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Xcavate: The Wolverine may have just found it's Director!

In Xcavate I'll be digging out the latest X-news for all you X-fans!

So who's thinking "Enough with the X-Men First Class discussions already!"?? Well I've decided to give y'all guys a break from all that hype...Considerate me :) And what better way to do so than to talk about the cinematic status of everybody's favorite clawed mutant!

So today we talk about the status of The Wolverine movie.

Here's what you oughta know about the progress on this stand-alone Wolverine flick:
*Yup, I have purposely not mentioned it as a sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine as it is not. It's like a completely new episode in the life of Mr. James Howlett where they are making use of his 1982 Japan storyline in the comics (written by Chris Claremont with artwork from Frank Miller).

*The Wolverine was set to go into production in March this year, however after the terrible tragedy that struck Japan (where, obviously, most of the shooting would be taking place) the production was stalled.



*However the main reason for the halt was because Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky, who was officially announced as the director for the film decided to quit citing reasons that he would have to be out of the country for at least a year & that he couldn't be apart from his family for so long. (A great loss for the movie & Wolverine fans imo)

*Then we got news of several candidates who had been shortlisted to direct the flick. They were:
1) Jose Padilha (Brazilian crime drama Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) & its sequel)
2) Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith)
3) Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Brooklyn's Finest)
4) Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo, Never Let Me Go)
5) Justin Lin (Fast & Furious, Fast Five)
6) Gavin O'Connor (Miracle, Pride and Glory)
7) James Mangold (Knight and Day, 3:10 to Yuma)
8) Gary Shore (commercial director)
Perhaps the only MAIN reason that a commercial director, Shore, is on the list is because of the video he created for a Wolverine sequel movie. Check it out- it's bloody (no pun intended) amazing!



And now for the news that the title of this post refers to...drum roll please :P
It appears that Fox studios & Hugh Jackman have both decided to go with James Mangold. Negotiations are apparently happening as you read this.

Mangold has directed Hugh Jackman before in Kate & Leopold. His other standout movies (besides the two mentioned above) include Cop Land, Girl Interrupted & Walk the Line.

The Wolverine is set for a 2012 release. Until then, watch this space to see what lies ahead in the fate of the Ol' Canucklehead's next silver screen SNIKT!

See Jackman in action as Wolverine...Order your Blu-ray/DVD of X-Men Origins: Wolverine if you don't have it already!

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Xstatic! X-Men First Class smashes Wolverine in India!

YAY! When I read this news it was like music to my ears...err, heaven to my eyes...? :P

X-Men First Class released last Friday (June 10) out here in India & has done splendidly indeed! Let me list out it's weekend achievements:
*Made a record weekend opening of Rs 10.02 crores (that is $2,277,273 to be precise)
*Faired better than all the Hindi movies that released that Friday
*Accomplished the biggest opening for a non-3D Hollywood movie in 2011 in India
*Registered the 2nd biggest opening of 2011 for a Hollywood film in India, racing ahead of Fast 5(!!)



Another positive thing to note is that the X-Men franchise has been mostly on an upward trend, gaining increasing profits from India with each release. Rewinding back, X-Men Origins: Wolverine grossed around $1.5 million in just its opening weekend in India. X3, X2 & X-Men got a TOTAL gross of $943,600, $781,689 & $809,304 respectively, from India...

Ahh! I feel so satisfied now that I can visualize the Fox execs scrambling to make a First Class sequel & possibly fast-tracking a sequel to the original trilogy as well!

Awesome days to be an X-fan that's for sure! :D You can read the entire article about this from the Times of India!


Wanna watch XFC in HD anytime you want at home?? Pre-order your Blu-ray &/or DVD today! And if you haven't got X-Men Origins: Wolverine on Blu-ray/DVD you can order that out here too!

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Xperience: X-Men First Class Soundtrack Review

We've all seen the film. We all enjoyed it! But did we all notice the aural EPIC-NESS that is Henry Jackman's soundtrack??

Well I heard the OST before I even saw the movie (with it being released here in India on the 10th & all...) so I could recognize the awesome tracks as they were being played in the background. Now the OST doesn't release until June 28, but who says I can't do a review for all the songs? I've heard em all, haven't I?



The track listing is as follows:
1. First Class
2. Pain and Anger
3. Would You Date Me?
4. Not That Sort Of Bank
5. Frankenstein’s Monster
6. What Am I Thinking
7. Cerebro
8. Mobilise For Russia
9. Rise Up To Rule
10. Cold War
11. X-Training
12. Rage and Serenity
13. To Beast Or Not To Beast
14. True Colors
15. Let Battle Commence
16. Sub Lift
17. Coup d’État
18. Mutant and Proud
19. X-Men
20. Magneto

Now we'll look at the soundtrack from two points of view: 1) Movie pov 2) Easy listening

From the movie point of view all the tracks are amazing! They start with a strong undercurrent of music signifying the confusion, pain, seething anger- bascially all the emotions a mutant would face trying to fit in a world that fears them :) So though some may not be great to listen to on your ipod, they definitely fit in with the emotion that Vaughn tries to capture in his movie...

Lets start off with the tracks that are great to listen to on your ipod!

First Class is a great musical piece, starting off with the XFC musical "theme"- if you will- with the brilliant violin orchestral music! This type of epic violin music (eg. the background tracks played in trailers) REALLY lifts me & gives me such a surreal feeling! Then the electronic guitars come into the mix & it lifts it's COOL rating even higher! The melding of the two instruments- classical & modern is really nice!

Not That Sort Of Bank starts of with the 'Magneto' theme of the movie. Starts off with a bang & ends with some quiet guitar playing & foreboding violins. And after that quiet lull, the controlled violins once again come into play with some great beats in the background. Frankenstein’s Monster starts off with this typical gothic/Frankenstein theme that once again goes into that cool Magneto theme! As the track continues the tension builds & it gets more epic as it goes on...

Now imo, The OST really starts picking up the pace & getting pregressively better from Track 7 to 17. Before Cerebro, First Class is really the only track that is REALLY great for ipod listening. Cerebro has a calm, understated feel about it, but the frenetic violins playing the First Class theme are great as always. Mobilise For Russia has the foreboding violins signifying impending doom & the undercurrent of other violins playing, depicting the fight against it. It ends with a brilliant crescendo!

Rise Up To Rule starts quiet but once it gets in it's groove (by about 00:25)? WOAH! It's friggin amazing! lol. Then it goes into the synths & that really gives a great vibe to the song. The great many variations in it make it one of the greater songs in this OST. It's also the longest song in the album at 5:56. Cold War starts quiet but here we get a different violin play, a really cool beat.



Then onto my fave track from the whole album! X-Training from the get-go you know this is an awesome track! It has a great starting, a very Iron Man vibe to it...I was slightly peeved the song wasn't played right from it's amazing start in the film. Great beats & guitar play! And even the First Class 'theme' I spoke of before is played differently here primarily with electronic guitars instead of violins, which feature but it's mainly the guitars. It's so good it's currently my mobile ringtone! :P

True Colors starts with a very grungy violin routine that sounds brilliant. Towards the end it goes softer & finally ends in a soothing piano played tune. I think that tune is played when they pan on Mystique's body the first time she decides to go nude. Let Battle Commence alternates from quiet vibes to brilliant beats that seriously would do great on any Lord of the Rings battle scenes! A nice variation in this piece too,  & it also happens to be the second longest track at 4:45. Sub Lift starts & continues with the usual First Class theme, but it's done in such a way that it doesn't make you feel like a repetition. This eventually gets into synths & a more electronic rock vibe.

Coup d’État goes into a slow grungy Magneto theme, then transcends with serene violins ending with a crescendo. Lastly, Magneto is another track which from the get-go you know is gonna be packed with awesomeness! The Magneto theme I was talking about all this time is played throughout this song but in no way makes us tired of hearing it till the end!

Now onto the tunes which are great only for the movie & hearing them on your ipod may make you feel sleepy ;P Not that that's happened to me or that they are bad tracks- just emotionally ridden & sound great for the movie score alone...

Pain and Anger starts off with that quiet undercurrent I was talking about, rises to a moderate crescendo & it then dips again. It's not called "Pain and Anger" for nothing :P Would You Date Me? perfectly depicts the pain that Mystique feels with her appearance: the self-loathing & shame. Ditto for Beast's confusion & dilemma with the To Beast Or Not To Beast track. However unlike Mystique's track, this one ends with an angsty violin play, possibly of his actual transformation into the blue scientist we all know & love.

Nothing much to say about the What Am I Thinking track. I don't even remember where this track comes in the movie either! Rage and Serenity starts slow with calming violins giving way to piano & guitar strums. It's not bad for easy listening but if you more into fast, upbeat music you won't dig it so much. I do, however, very much have it on my phone to listen to.

Mutant and Proud is all about discovering that you are special the way you are & there's absolutely no reason to hide that. This track displays all that with its sombre violins & interjecting piano. I would've thought a track titled X-Men would've been more badass than what this is- something along the lines of the First Class track. But it only picks it's pace up at 1:58 with a rock rendition of the Magneto theme. And the track is of 2:59 duration! lol

And that's it! My review of the X-Men First Class OST. You can have a listen via the vid below & tell me if you agree with me or not...

UPDATE (19/7): So I've FINALLY downloaded Take That's song "Love Love" that was used by (fellow Brit) director Matthew Vaughn as part of the XFC soundtrack & it's awesome! I still find it weird that it doesn't feature in the OST that was released & was yet the first song to play once the credits rolled! Anywho it's my current fave song & I hope it grows on you guys too! Check the officil XFC version of the video out below:



AND you can now download &/or buy the CD of this EPIC Soundtrack from the links below!

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Xhibit: My X-Men: First Class Poster Creation...

In the Xhibit segment I'll be posting works of my own :P related to the X-Men...I'd really appreciate your feedback on all of these.

Quite a while ago the X-Men Movies India page on Facebook had started a competition wherein we X-fans send our entries of our own poster creations for the movie. Still awaiting the results for the contest, so dunno yet if I've won.

I've already won for my FB profile pic I made (which is the same profile pic here too...) Hadn't created that dp for the contest itself but after posting it on that same group with the XFC badge they created, I won that contest! A larger version of that dp is below:



Anyways do check out the poster below & sound off in the comments section! What did you like about it & what can I do to make more awesome posters in the future...?

Wanna watch XFC in HD anytime you want at home?? Pre-order your Blu-ray &/or DVD today!

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