New 'X-Men' tops N American box office

The 20th Century Fox's "X-Men: Days Of Future Past" debuted in first place this weekend with a strong estimated 90.7 million dollars from 3996 locations in ticket sales, according to Rentrak. That marked the film the top opening ever for any Fox film, including "Avatar."

"X-Men: Days of Future Past" registered the fourth largest debut of 2013 thus far, behind "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", last week's "Godzilla" and the other superhero film "The Amazing Spider-Man 2". Fox's current estimate for the four-day Memorial Day weekends is 110 million dollars.

This "X-Men" received a strong "A" rating on CinemaScore and as high as 91 percent of critics on Rotten Tomatoes recommended it.

It's been 14 years since the first "X-Men" film, and altogether the first six movies has earned 1.1 billion dollars. In 2000, the first "X-Men" stunned analysts with 157 million dollars in sales. Since then, the series has collected a healthy 178 million per film.

"X-Men: Days of Future Past", directed by Bryan Singer who directed the first two X-Men films and starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellan, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence, focused on the story that Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back five decades from 2023 to change the course of history and alter the future.

Last weekend's debut "Godzilla" dropped a sizable 66 percent from last weekend to second place with 31.4 million dollars in sales. The 3D sci-fi action remake has grossed 148.8 million dollars in 10 days in north America. Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler's "Blended" debuted with only 14. 2 million dollars from 3,555 locations, placing No. 3 this weekend.

The Warner Bros. estimated "Blended" may earn 18.1 million dollars for the four-day holiday weekend, one of the worst openings for a Sandler in recent times.

The first night moviegoers gave "Blended" a "A-" CinemaScore, but only 15 percent of critic on Rotten Tomatoes stood on it's side. Rounding out the 10 most popular films in North America this weekend, as estimated by studios, were "Neighbors" (13.9 million dollars), "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" (7.8 million), "Million Dollar Arm" (7.1 million), "The Other Woman" (3.7 million), "Rio 2 " (2.5 million), "Chef" (2.3 million) and "Heaven Is For Real" (2 million).

Public appearance fees for Chinese celebs

A list ranking commercial appearance fees for Chinese celebrities was recently published and Chinese actress Fan Bingbing topped the list with 1.35 million yuan ($216,493) per appearance, according to Hong Kong media on.cc.