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X-Men Origins: Wolverine opened in early May of 2009, and earned about $5 million from midnight previews. Its opening day was reported at $34.4 million, and was a shrinking daisy after that. The Saturday fell 15%, but without the previews, was flat with Friday. The Sunday dropped another 27% from Saturday, giving Origins: Wolverine a internal weekend multiplier of 2.47, not very good for a film targeted at teens (and older), and released when school was in (which usually drives multipliers higher). Word got out quick that this film was terrible, and audiences reacted. The opening weekend multiplier was poor, and the follow up weekend was worse, dropping an abysmal 69% in its second weekend. The film, which cost $150 million to make, opened at $83 million and closed at the domestic box office with only $179.9 million, a terrible opening-to-total multiplier of 2.11. X-Men Origins: Wolverine barely doubled its opening weekend over its entire domestic run. Overseas wasn’t much better, and against that budget, the first Wolverine probably lost money for Fox.

Jump ahead four years to The Wolverine, a film that actually had some thought put into it, but opened to less than the crappy original. James Mangold (Copland, Walk The Line) stepped into the director’s chair, and saw an opening day of $20.7 million, about $15 million less than the original. The opening weekend followed the same progress down - a 12% drop on Saturday to $18.1 million, and a 21% drop to Sunday. The opening weekend was reported at $53.1 million, and it finished with $132.6 million, giving it a better internal weekend multiplier of 2.6, and a better open to total multiplier of 2.5. Overseas revenue bailed this version of Wolverine out, with the international total coming in at a massive $282 million, foisting the overall total up to $415 million against a $120 million budget. This one would have made money for Fox, and brings us to Logan.

Logan’s combined Thursday/Friday number was reported at a massive $33 million, which is a lot more than Zootopia earned on opening day ($19.5 million), Other opening days for big March titles: 300 earned $28.1 million, and Oz the Great and Powerful earned $24.1 million on opening day; however, Logan could not catch Alice In Wonderland, which had an opening day of $40 million on its way to a weekend of $116.1 million. Compared to the X-Men films, Logan just missed Days of Future Past, which had an opening day of $35.5 million and a debut weekend of $90.8 million. On opening day, Logan earned more than half of the biggest weekend so far in 2017, with that record formerly belonging to The LEGO Batman Movie, which had an opening weekend of $53 million. Logan was off to a great start, but would the legs dry up immediately like with the first two Wolverine films?

Logan’s Saturday was reported at $31.3 million, off 5% compared to the Thursday/Friday figure. Before we get too excited about the drop, keep in mind the Thursday preview amount doubled the amount earned by last two Wolverine films, creating more of an atmosphere for front-loading. For March, the Saturday number is good enough, as it pushes Logan into the top four opening weekends for films released in March and sets the stage for a super March. I guess if you are Hugh Jackman, this is the way you want to go out.

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