Well, I waited for the teaser trailer to be released before I made this one...
X-MEN 3
Release Date: May 26, 2006
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: Brett Ratner
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, James Marsden, Anna Paquin, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Shawn Ashmore, Kelsey Grammer, Vinnie Jones, Ben Foster, Olivia Williams, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Production Stills: View here
Premise: At this point, at least part of the story may be loosely based on Joss Whedon's recent run of the comic book in which a geneticist (Shohreh Aghdashloo) finds a "cure" for the mutation found in mutants, spurring the mutant Hank McCoy, known as "The Beast" (Kelsey Grammer), to try to stop being a mutant.
Trailer: View Here
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The first X-Men movie surprised many back in 1999 when it delivered a $54 million opening weekend, one of the five best ever by the time it was released and went on to gross $157 million in US theatres. It was the movie that kicked off the comic book adaptations craze which led to such humongous hits as Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2 and X2: X-Men United.
The movie was well-received, it did very good in sales and rentals and by the time its sequel, X2: X-Men United came out, it expanded its fanbase way beyond the fanbase of the comics. The movie opened in a then-record 3,741 theatres to an opening weekend of $85.6 million, the 4th best by the time it was released (behind the first two Harry Potter flicks and Spider-Man). Everyone knew it'd be big, but that big? However, the frontloading and the onslaught of The Matrix Reloaded cut its legs short despite great WoM and good reviews. It ended up with a multiplier just above 2.5 and a gross of around $215 million in the USA. Still, despite the mediocre multiplier the movie was hugely beloved by film fans and is still widely considered as one of the best superhero movies ever made.
Next year, over the Memorial's Day weekend, the third movie of the saga comes out, but this time it does not have the creator of the series, Bryan Singer at the helm, but the Rush Hour-director Brett Ratner. To be honest, I was worried over Ratner and Singer's departure, but the amazing X3 teaser trailer blew my doubts away. Moreover, movies like Fantastic Four and Batman Begins, both of which made over $150 million this year, have shown that the superhero genre is still alive and blooming. As of now, I see no reason for X-Men 3 not to continue the trend.
Let's take a look at its competiton. In its opening weekend, the only movie it faces is the Wayans comedy Little Man which won't matter at all. However, it will have to fight off the 2nd weekend of The Da Vinci Code which will surely be big as well as the 2nd weekend of Over the Hedge and the third weekend of Poseidon (which I don't think will be big anyway). The 4th weekend of Mission: Impossible 3 won't matter much by then anyway.
In its second weekend, X-Men 3 will have to fight off the romcom The Break-Up and the Jack Black comedy Nacho Libre, none of which really threaten the movie's target audiences anyway. It's not until June 9th, X-Men 3's third weekend that a really big movie will come out, Cars.
I think it will be fairly hard for X-Men 3 to keep up with the critical acclaim of the second movie, but I don't see this being a terrible movie either. Besides that, bad reviews didn't hurt F4 anyway. Unlike the 2nd movie, X-Men 3 won't have the advantage of being released on the first weekend of the summer with no competition at all, but then again it will benefit from bigger summer weekdays and the Memorial's Day weekend. I am also pretty sure that the theatre count will be close to 4,000 and might even break that.
My current predictions:
Opening weekend (4-day) - $111 million
Total gross - $244 million
I thought it opend on a thursday for some reason 
