'Wolverine' Could Sink Its Claws Into $100M

But New Line will try to lure the ladies away from Hugh Jackman's "X-Men" prequel this weekend with “Ghost of Girlfriends Past."

From: thewrap.com
Written by: Lauren Horwitch.

It’ll take more than a swine flu scare to keep audiences away from “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” opening in 4,000 theaters this weekend.

The Fox prequel -- the first in a coming onslaught of summer tentpoles including “Star Trek” (May 8) and “Angels and Demons” (May 15) -- is a shoo-in for No. 1. The question is, how big will it be?

According to Marketcast tracking data published in Ad Age last week, “Wolverine” is on track to hit $100 million this weekend, which would make it the biggest opening of 2009 so far. This year's current box-office champion is "Fast & Furious" which opened on April 5 with $72.5 million.

Fandango says that by 5 p.m. Wednesday, 65 percent of its ticket sales were “Wolverine,” and Movietickets.com reported Wednesday afternoon that 200 screenings of “Wolverine” already had sold out -- over a quarter of which are for midnight shows on Thursday.

By comparison, Marketcast predicted “Trek” will open with about $50 million.

Indeed, $100 million doesn’t seem unreasonable, considering 2006’s “X-Men: the Last Stand” made $123 million on its opening four-day weekend and “X2” scored 85.6 million in 2003. The three previous “X-Men” films have made more than $1.16 billion worldwide. Fox is already developing an “origins” prequel about Ian McKellen’s character Magneto and other X-Men.

Still, Fox senior VP and general sales manager Chris Aronson is hedging his bets -- he told TheWrap that the studio doesn’t think “Wolverine” will hit $100 million. “That’s not what we’re expecting in a million years,” he said. “If we can gross $70 million or over, it would be fantastic. The expectation bar has to be set at a realistic place. It’s a spin-off of a movie that’s been sequelized twice.”

Marketcast’s report indicated that women under 24 could be a key factor in “Wolverine’s” success -- 38 percent of women in that age group said they have a “definite interest” in seeing Jackman as Wolverine for the fourth time, while only 18 percent expressed interest in seeing “Trek.”

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