20th Century Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine kicked-off the summer box office season with a huge opening day of $35 million from 4,099 theaters, including about $5 million from midnight screenings. Among the “X-Men” films, the prequel ranks second behind X-Men: The Last Stand, which grossed $45.1 million on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend of 2006.
One can project that the Wolverine origin story will end up making somewhere between $84 to 86 million in its opening three-day weekend. Last May, Iron Man earned $38.7 million its first day to go on to gross $102.1 million its first weekend.
Check back tomorrow for the official studio estimates.
