You just can’t keep a tortured superhero down.
The Wolverine—much like the film’s titular character—was durable, if not wholly indestructible, in its box office debut. The angsty X-Man sliced and diced his way to an estimated $55 million weekend, a touch below most prognostications and 35% off of X-Men Origins: Wolverine tallies, but still a nice, tidy payday.
With the modest success of The Wolverine, makers of would-be blockbusters can take away two lessons from this summer: One, superhero flicks still haven’t reached their full saturation point. Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel were two of the summer’s biggest success stories. And two, whatever you do, never ever ever try to make anything original. The year’s seven top-grossing films (Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2, Man of Steel, Monsters University, Fast & Furious 6, Star Trek Into Darkness and Oz the Great and Powerful) are all sequels, prequels or reboots of well-known franchises. Pacific Rim and R.I.P.D.? Not so much.
That said, an original story can still make a bit o’ money. Case in point: last week’s winner The Conjuring, which slid to second place with a $22.1 million weekend. The horror movie lost about 47% of its audience, but that’s good for the standard fright-flick—most of which hemorrhage paying moviegoers after the first weekend at a terrifying rate.
Despicable Me 2 was third this weekend, collecting $16 million and officially becoming the year’s No. 2 movie domestically. It has earned $306.4 million, about $20 million more than third-place Man of Steel.
Turbo, another animated film, oozed into fourth place with $13.3 million. It staved off Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2, which settled for fifth and an $11.5 million weekend.
Interesting but useless movie stat of the day: Grown Ups 2 also became the 14th Sandler flick to earn more than $100 million in its run. Staggering when you think about it, really. Ready for some more useless movie trivia, courtesy boxofficemojo.com? Tom Cruise, who’s been making hit movies since before I had braces, has made 15 such flicks.
It makes me want to look out the window for flying pigs.
Final figures update: 1. The Wolverine, $53.1 million; 2. The Conjuring, $22.2 million; 3. Despicable Me 2, $16.4 million; 4. Turbo, $13.7 million; 5. Grown Ups 2, $11.6 million.
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