James Mangold’s The Wolverine easily topped the domestic box office with an estimated total of $55 million, but that was $5-10 million below expectations and well below the $85.1 million that the original X-Men Origins: Wolverine earned back in 2009.  But the latest Fox X-Men film did well overseas as it opened with $86.1 million in 100 markets (but not yet in Japan and China where it should also do well).  Overall the total of the top 12 films was up 25.2% from the same weekend last year when The Dark Knight Rises dominated the chart in its second weekend.
 
With a fairly strong Thursday night showing of $4 million analysts were expecting The Wolverine to hit $65 million for the weekend as late as Friday afternoon, but the movie’s appeal, which was strong with fanboys, but weaker than expected with mainstream audiences, was front-loaded.  The Wolverine’s less-than-stellar domestic debut, which comes on the heels of poor openings from After Earth, White House Down, Pacific Rim, and R.I.P.D., has some analysts belaboring the obvious--the studios have slated too many expensive "tentpoles" for this summer season.  Part of The Wolverine’s problem could be the 2009 film, which received only a 38% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  The first Wolverine film was well-attended, but even hardcore fans found the movie flawed, so there may have been a hangover that kept some folks away from The Wolverine in spite of its 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and solid "A-" CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): July 26-28, 2013
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	The Wolverine	$55,000,000	3,924	$14,016	$55,000,000	1
2	The Conjuring	$22,130,000	3,022	$7,323	$83,867,000	2
3	Despicable Me 2	$16,024,000	3,476	$4,610	$306,413,000	4
4	Turbo	$13,325,000	3,809	$3,498	$55,768,000	2
5	Grown Ups 2	$11,500,000	3,258	$3,530	$101,664,000	3
6	Red 2	$9,400,000	3,016	$3,117	$35,074,000	2
7	Pacific Rim	$7,540,000	2,602	$2,898	$84,026,000	3
8	The Heat	$6,850,000	2,384	$2,873	$141,245,000	5
9	R.I.P.D.	$5,857,000	2,850	$2,055	$24,352,000	2
10	Fruitvale Station	$4,657,000	1,064	$4,377	$6,339,000	3

 
While The Wolverine faltered here in North America, it is doing far better overseas where it posted the best opening ever for an X-Men movie.  Fox also did a good job of keeping costs down.  Thanks to credits from the Australian government, production cost was "just" $120 million, and Fox also kept its marketing costs to a minimum with a plethora of marketing partnerships.  Still it also might be possible to draw the conclusion that while the Wolverine character is among the most popular comic book characters among hardcore fans, mainstream audiences (at least so far) are more comfortable with Spider-Man, Batman, and Iron Man.  Will Wolverine ever be as popular with women as Spider-Man or Iron Man?  Opening weekend audiences were 58% male and 58% over the age of 25.  To improve its domestic performance The Wolverine will have to broaden its appeal to women and younger viewers.
 
As predicted here last week the horror movie The Conjuring didn’t have the quick fade that so many of the contemporary high-concept horror films experience.  Last week’s surprise box office winner dropped just 47.1% as it earned $22.1 million and brought its cumulative to $83 million in just ten days virtually insuring that it will earn over $100 million before it is through.
 
Third place went to Despicable Me 2 Universal’s monster hit that dropped just 35.7% as it brought its domestic cumulative to $306.4 million as it blew by Man of Steel to become the second highest grossing film of the year so far.
 
Fourth place went to another animated feature, Dreamworks’ Turbo, which declined just 37.5% as it earned $13.3 million and brought its cumulative to $55.7 million.  While there is a lot of talk about the excessive number of live-action tentpoles this summer, there is also a glut of animated family films and the expensive Turbo ($135 million production cost) could be the movie that takes it on the chin when Smurfs 2 and Disney’s Planes open in the coming weeks.
 
Adam Sandler’s critically-panned Grown-Ups 2 took the fifth spot as it dropped 42%, earning $11.5 million in its third weekend bringing its cumulative past the $100 million mark.  Sixth place went to Red 2, which dropped 47.9% in its second frame.  While this is a relatively small drop, the movie’s weak opening means that this sequel still has a long ways to go to break even.
 
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim continued to struggle domestically as it tumbled 52.9% in its third weekend.  The film’s domestic tally of $84 million remains a serious disappointment and the film is shedding theaters so it will be lucky to hit $100 million here in North America.  The movie has already made $140 million overseas, and foreign grosses remain its best hope of defraying at least a major portion of its enormous $190 million production cost.
 
The "R" rated comedy The Heat remained in the Top Ten for a fifth straight weekend as it dropped just 26.4%, earning $6.8 million and running its domestic total to $141.2 million.
 
Universal’s R.I.P.D. is definitely dead in the water.  It slipped just 54%, but the $130 million movie has only earned $24.3 million (and less than half of that overseas) in its first ten days, so the question becomes exactly how big the studio’s write-off will be.
 
The final spot in the Top Ten went to Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, a film based on a true story about the final hours of young black man who was tragically (and unnecessarily) killed by a BART policeman in Oakland.  While this sort of socially conscious drama is not typical summer movie fare, it has benefited from the film’s numerous parallels to the equally unnecessary death of Trayvon Martin.
 
At number 14 Disney’s The Lone Ranger earned $1.6 million it is fourth weekend.  So far the $215 million production has only earned $163 million worldwide, an strong indication that another big write-down is in the offing..
 
Check back next week to see if the live-action/animated hybrid The Smurfs 2, which debuts on Wednesday, or the action movie based on Steven Grant’s comic book 2 Guns will be able to unseat The Wolverine.