In spite of poor reviews and the unprecedented leak of a work print to the Internet more than a month before the film’s opening, X-Men Origins: Wolverine easily topped the first summer weekend box office derby with an estimated total of $87 million, the best bow that any film has registered so far in 2009.  In dollar terms Wolvie’s debut was close to X 2’s $85.6 million opening in 2003 (though ticket prices have risen 21% in the past 6 years), but well below X-Men: The Last Stand’s $102.8 million in 2006.  Still Fox should be happy with the Wolverine debut.  With a smaller cast of superheroes and hefty tax credits from the Australian government, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is estimated to have cost $130 million to produce, versus the $210 million that Last Stand (which earned $234 domestically) cost due in part to the escalating salaries of its large cast.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): May 1-3, 2009

Wolverine got off to a muscular start on Friday with $35 million in sales and declined just 15% on Saturday.  Hugh Jackman’s status as People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” undoubtedly helped the film strike a solid gender balance for a superhero movie--47% of the audience was female.  52% of the moviegoers were over 25, a pretty good balance for a superhero film though Iron Man and Spider-Man have managed to attract a higher percentage of young viewers.  The solid opening of Wolverine should reinforce Fox’s current plans to release a second X-Men spin-off film featuring Magneto in 2011.  2011 is shaping up to .be a very busy movie year for Marvel superheroes with screen epics for Captain America, Thor, and Spider-Man 4 already scheduled in addition to Magneto’s star turn.

Wolverine averaged a potent $21,225 per theater and easily outdistanced the weekend’s other new entries.  It appears that every major superhero debut is now accompanied by an obligatory romantic comedy counter-programmed to appeal to audiences uninterested in bombastic superhero conflicts.  This weekend it was Warner Bros.' Ghosts of Girlfriends Past starring Michael McConaughey and Jennifer Garner, which earned an estimated $15.3 million, good enough for second place. The other film debuting this weekend, the CGI animated science fiction adventure feature, Battle for Terra, bombed, with a total that was just over $1 million and a weak $916 per theater average, adding weight to the axiom that adventure-themed animated films won't fly with American audiences.

The holdover titles did fairly well, especially Monsters vs. Aliens, which dropped just 31.9% and moved up to #5 in its sixth weekend in theaters.  The Dreamworks animated blockbuster has already brought in $182.4 million, making it the top earning film of 2009 so far.  Buoyed by Wolvie’s debut and solid performances by the holdovers, the total of the top ten films was nearly identical with the total generated during the same weekend last year, when Iron Man led the way with its $102 million bow.  Fox can only hope that Wolverine will have the kind of staying power that Iron Man, which earned just 31% of its domestic total during its debut weekend, demonstrated.   However, it appears unlikely that Wolverine, which faces stiff competition from the opening of the new Star Trek film next weekend, will be able to match Iron Man’s “legs.” 

Some Hollywood analysts put the cost to Fox of the leak of the Wolverine workprint at $20 million, but the actual amount of the loss is impossible to calculate, and the culprit, like the true cost of his crime, remains unknown.  The film did well in Singapore, where illegal downloading is rampant, but in Germany (another downloading hot spot), Wolverine posted the lowest opening of any X-Men film.  Overall, in spite of the piracy and the flu epidemic that wiped out Mexican grosses, Wolverine came a lot closer to matching X-Men: The Last Stand internationally than it did domestically--but the film needed to do well during its opening week since it faces strong competition in every market with a new blockbuster slated for every weekend in the month of May.