Lackluster Box-Office Be Damned, 'X-Men: First Class' Could Get A Sequel

Fans defy critics all the time. Critics, more often than not, love things that often bore fans and hate things audiences eat up with a spoon. But the bottom line? It rarely lies, and often foretells the sequel-or-no-sequel future. Except in this case.

Though it flew beneath 20 Century Fox's earning expectations -- no matter how much core audiences seemingly loved it -- it looks like director Matthew Vaughan could very likely get a second crack at the continuing "X-Men: First Class" saga, reports The Geek Files.

The film didn't earn back its budget domestically, earning $139 million on a $160-million budget. Overseas, it managed to earn another $195 million. Nevertheless, Fox has plans to go forward with a sequel.

It seems suits feel that it under-performed not so much because it's not a good movie -- if you've seen it, you know that absolutely nothing could be further from the truth -- but because theaters were already stacked with blockbusters and Vaughn's prequel lacked the significant star-power the first four movies enjoyed with Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Famke Jansen and Anna Paquin leading those casts.

Believe it or not, history backs Fox on this one. The first "X-Men" released in 2000 was no flop in its own right, enjoying an 82% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (which "X-Men: First Class" tellingly tops with an 87% Fresh rating.) But "X2: X-Men United" trumps every other series entry so far with an 88% Fresh rating, and ranks near many fans' lists of Hollywood's greatest superhero movies.

In fact, it probably also bears noting that -- speaking subjectively -- many fans regard only Christopher Nolan's "Batman" films ("Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight"), Bryan Singer's first two "X-Men" efforts and Sam Raimi's first two "Spider-Man" movies as the only ones wherein a sequel actually topped the original.