Early Friday numbers painted an overly optimistic picture of new weekend release “The Wolverine.” Though it handily won the weekend box office, it did so with a gross below expectations.
With weekend estimates revealing a haul of only $55 million, “Wolverine” falls short of studio estimates, which reported at $65 million, and the $60-70 million industry consensus.
By Friday evening, it looked on track for about $63 million, but it ended up slowing that night and continued underperforming throughout the weekend.
On par with the $55.1 million nabbed by “First Class,” the tally is nonetheless considerably below that of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” which earned $85.1 million in its opener.
Down 47.1% from last weekend’s gross, “The Conjuring” claimed second place with $22.1 million for the weekend. “Despicable Me 2” followed with $16.0 million (crossing the $300 million domestic barrier in the process), while “Turbo” ($13.3 million) and “Grown Ups 2” ($11.5 million) completed the top five.
With “The Wolverine” representing the weekend’s only big new release, eyeballs were on the expansions of “Fruitvale Station” and “The Way, Way Back.”
“Fruitvale,” which expanded to 1064 theaters, earned $4.7 million for tenth place, while “Back” earned an eleventh place $3.3 million from its 886 screens.
“The To-Do List” opened to $1.5 million from 591 screens, while “Blue Jasmine” pulled $0.6 million from six.
