Don't Call a Wolverine an Iron Man
Twentieth Century Fox
Last year, Iron Man opened the summer box-office season with a $98 million bang—$102 million, if you counted the early-bird sneaks. Come Friday at midnight, X-Men Origins: Wolverine will kick off Hollywood's blockbuster months with a...or a...
Well, what exactly?
"Until we open the picture and we see the returns, we're keeping our fingers crossed," says Chris Aronson of 20th Century Fox.
The studio behind Hugh Jackman's fang-and-fur franchise is either being realistic, smart or maybe both to discourage comparisons to Iron Man—and put a big, tight lid on expectations.
"If we can do $70 million this weekend," Aronson says, "we would be ecstatic."
Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray says a $70 million-$80 million debut, potentially the X-Men series' third-lowest, would not be unexpected nor a disappointment: "It should still be a huge opening."
Only three of this decade's lead-off summer movies have taken in $70 million-plus in their first weekends. Just four years ago, in 2005, Kingdom of Heaven kicked off blockbuster season with a relatively puny $19.6 million opening.
As Wolverine's ample bad luck would have it, though, it's the follow-up act to Iron Man. And the comparisons aren't just unfavorable, they really don't work.
Iron Man arrived in theaters as a shiny new suit of armor with a killer Super Bowl trailer under its utility belt. Wolverine rolls in as the fourth movie of a decade-old franchise that can't easily be called—or sold as—a sequel because (a) Jackman is its only returning X-Men star and (b) Fox says the film's a spinoff.
"I always wonder with this kind of movie," Gray says. "When I first heard this project announced, my expectations were low."
Critics are proving to be just as cool to the finished product. At one point today on Rotten Tomatoes, only 42 percent of the early reviews were judged favorable to the film. (By comparison—sorry, Wolverine—Iron Man's Tomatometer reading was a hot 93 percent.)
Add to this the bad buzz and bad vibes that come from a leaked (unfinished) print and an international swine-flu scare, respectively, and Wolverine has about as much baggage as even a superstrong superhero can possibly carry.
If the movie can avoid a Kingdom of Heaven disaster, then a relieved Hollywood, which so far has bucked the recession, might only have to wait one week to get its all-new Iron Man.
"Star Trek is the X-factor here," says Gray. "Star Trek does appear to be more akin to Iron Man than Wolverine does."
Well, Wolverine probably wouldn't want to be hemmed in by armor, anyway.
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