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The weekend estimate for Logan comes in at a massive $85.3 million, the third best debut for March, behind only Batman v Superman, The Hunger Games, and Alice In Wonderland. It squeaks by Oz the Great Powerful, which debuted to $79.1 million. Logan earned that vast amount from 4,071 venues, the widest ever release ever for an R-rated film. For Hugh Jackman, this is his second biggest opening, squeaking ahead of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and behind X-Men: The Last Stand, which opened to $102.8 million. Director James Mangold, who also directed The Wolverine, will get his first big hit with Logan, as this will easily overtake the $132.6 million Wolverine earned domestically and will overtake his other $100 million plus earner, Walk the Line, which turned in $119.5 million. Logan cost $97 million to make before prints and advertising, which means it will need to make $300 million worldwide for Fox to see a profit.

While yes, this is a Wolverine movie, which means the fanbase shows up, like last week with Get Out, we have a successful movie because the people behind Logan stepped and made a very good movie. Logan is 94% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes, and we have two wide release films released within weekends of each other, that scored a 99% fresh rating (Get Out) and now Logan at 94% fresh. Also like Get Out, Logan earned an A- Cinemascore, good enough for what it has to do going forward. The legs should be plentiful, but it does have some blockbuster competition to face off against next weekend (Kong) and the weekend after (Beauty and the Beast). I think Logan will approach $250 million stateside before all is said and done, and then find another $400 million overseas.

Finishing well back in second is Get Out, but its story is just as fascinating as that of Logan. After being estimated at $30.5 million before being bumped up to $33.4 million, Get Out was a bit of a mystery heading into the weekend. Would it behave like a traditional horror flick and drop 55-60%? Or would it behave like a critical darling, expand slightly and only drop 35-40%? How about a result better than both of those scenarios? Get Out pulled in $8 million on Friday (despite Logan), and finished the weekend with a wild $26.1 million. That gives the Jordan Peele flick a drop from opening weekend of only 22%, a number usually reserved for kids flicks or Oscar nominees. This is reminiscent of The Blair Witch project, when it dropped 17% from $29.2 million to $24.3 million. The difference, though, is that Blair Witch added over 1,000 venues, whereas Get Out added 157 screens. Get Out has now pulled in $76 million after 10 days of release, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Faith based flick The Shack shows up in third, as religious fanboys and girls do not buy tickets based on reviews. Lionsgate released the drama, starring Octavia Spencer as God and Sam Worthington as the tormented disciple. It got out of the gate strong on Friday, picking up $5.5 million, That’s a lot better than the $2.8/$2.9 million earned by God’s Not Dead and its sequel earned on opening day. Heaven is for Real opened on a Wednesday, but still earned $7.9 million on its first Friday, on its way to $22.5 million over its first Friday-to-Sunday to period. The Shack was not going to match that, but was likely going to do okay considering the $20 million budget. .

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