“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” opens Hollywood’s summer season in less than 15 hours here on the East Coast, and the question is whether is whether this prequel/reboot can repeat the performance of “X-Men: The Last Stand,” which debuted with $102.7 million three years ago. Ace prognosticator Steve Mason at
says that based on his tracking and conversations with other studios, “Wolverine” will do $92 million over three days, or a practically an identical number to another Marvel heavy metal hero, “Iron Man,” which the season lead-off a year ago. That didn’t work out too badly at all for “Iron Man,” because its second weekend competition was “Speed Racer,” which crashed and burned on arrival. “Wolverine,” on the other hand, is up against the hotly anticipated “Star Trek” reboot, which Mase predicts will “squash” the Marvel project “like a bug” the following weekend. Also, “Iron Man” received far better reviews — 93 percent from Rotten Tomatoes and 3.5 stars from me — than “Wolverine,” which is currently running 41 percent at RT and got
from yours truly yesterday. Still, Mase thinks a $92M opening for “Wolverine” would not be a bad outcome for Fox, which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp. and has reportedly been trying to lower expectations. Mase believes the new movie cost substantially less than “Last Stand” (which he claims cost as much as $210 million) thanks to star Hugh Jackman, who also gets a producer credit, taking a back-end deal. There are two other wide releases opening tomorrow. Mase predicts “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” a cheesetastic riff on “A Christmas Carol” bequeated by New Line to Warner Bros. with Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Michael Douglas (the latter channeling Robert Evans — more in tomorrow’s review from me!) will do a respectable $18M for second place. He figures “Battle for Terra,” one of those low-budget 3-D animations that may help kill off that fad for the third or fourth time, will flop and finish out of the top 10 with a paltry $3.4 million. Kyle will review.
