X-Men: The Last Stand grossed an estimated$107m at the North American box office over the weekend, becoming the fourthbiggest US opener in history and the biggest ever over the Memorial Day holidayweekend.

The estimate -- released on Sunday by 20thCentury Fox, which made the film with Marvel Entertainment -- was for the firstthree days of the holiday weekend. The tally will be even higher when four-dayestimates are issued on Monday, the last day of the holiday weekend.

The comic book sequel beat the Memorial Day openingweekend record of $90.2m established (over four days) in 1997 by The LostWorld: Jurassic Park. And Last Stand ranked behind only 2002's Spider-Man,last year's Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, and 2004's Shrek2 in the all-time domestic three-day opening weekend table.

Last Stand easily topped the openings of2000's original X-Men (which started with $54.5m and went on to gross $157.3mdomestically) and 2003's X2: X-Men United (which opened with $85.6m andended up with $214.9m).

Starring Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, with BrettRatner taking over from Bryan Singer as director, Last Stand got mixedreviews but immediately scored with its younger and male-skewing audience,taking $44.1m (the second biggest one-day domestic total ever) on Friday alone.

Though the film is billed as 'the climax of theX-Men trilogy,' the opening could now lead Fox and Marvel to try to extend thefranchise.

Last Stand's worldwide total was notimmediately available because Fox delayed releasing figures for the film's95-territory international launch until Monday.

Domestic estimates for most other films in the USmarketplace were also delayed until Monday.

Sony's The Da Vinci Code, which opened atthe top of the North American chart last weekend with a gross of $77m, islikely to drop to second place for the Memorial Day weekend.

Paramount's Over the Hedge is expected tocome in third in its second week (on Sunday the studio issued a three-day grossestimate of $27.3m, 29% down from last weekend) and the same studio's Mission:Impossible III will probably be fourth in its third week (three-day grossestimate was $6.6m, down 42%).

(The full North American box office top ten willappear in screendaily.com on Monday.)