Fearless Forecast - 'Wolverine' Big, But Should Fall Short of $100 Million

A year ago, Iron Man hit the ground running, kicking off summer with a $100 million debut. That was substantially more than most people would have thought going in. So saying X-Men Origins: Wolverine won't get to that number is hard to qualify, because on paper, it should do better than Iron Man. There have already been three movies with the character, all of them hits, and this is the first official summer movie, so... Reviews haven't been overly kind to Wolverine so far, which could play a part. The film also doesn't seem to have the buzz of Terminator and Star Trek, in large part because it's so familiar to audiences. There's no doubt it will do really well, but if the window is somewhere between $80 and $100 million, aim somewhere in the middle. This makes it sound like $90 million is a failure, and that's not true at all; only a handful of movies are likely to open north of $100 million all year long, and this won't miss by much. Wolverine is one of the only games in town this weekend, and that will help the X-Men movie a little bit. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is in the Made of Honor slot this weekend, and that film, with much less wattage in the cast, opened with about $15 million. So look for Girlfriends Past to do slightly better than that. Beyond the two new releases, there's not much to speak of, but you'd kind of expect that for the first weekend of summer, because late April is kind of a dumping ground for movies that can't make a living in May, June, or July. The Top Five:
1 - Wolverine ($90 million)
2 - Ghosts of Girlfriends Past ($19 million)
3 - Obsessed ($13 million)
4 - Earth ($6 million)
5 - 17 Again ($5 million)

Comments

[Josh]

You're much more generous with Ghosts of Girlfriends Past than I would have thought...

[Get The Big Picture]

The romcoms have done pretty well this year, and that's McConaughey's wheelhouse now. Predicting the first couple of weekends of summer is always tough; everyone was way off last year. You just never know how much the hype will help. So Wolverine could make $70 million this weekend and it would still be on pace to make money, but it's a lot lower than anyone would have thought. It's possible, though.

Romantic comedies almost always make $12 - $18 million if they've got a hint of star power. They're built for female audiences, and they don't have a Sex and the City this summer.