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Maybe if it starred LeBron James...

Kim Hollis: Wolverine, the non-sequel X-Men Origins film, opened to $85 million this weekend. Is this win, lose or draw for Fox?

Josh Spiegel: Draw, definitely. Obviously $85 million is a big number, but considering that the last X-Men film (as execrable as it was) made just over $100 million on its first weekend, Fox can't be too thrilled. Of course, on the up side, the leaked print added with all of the reshoots didn't make this anywhere close to a failure. Still, with Star Trek coming next week, I don't see Wolverine having very good legs. It's a good start to the summer, but I bet Fox would have loved a $100 million opening or more.

Brandon Scott: I was ready to dismiss this as an obvious win until I read Josh's perspective. I still think it is enough of a win, but it's not a blow me away total. The reviews have been increasingly getting worse, not that they matter for this sort of film, but better reviews would have made the movie more attractive to me. Good trailers, a likable star, people are hyping Jackman's Oscar publicity as helping this film, I guess it is a slight win, certainly not a disappointing figure.





Pete Kilmer: I think it's a draw. Word-of-mouth on how lackluster this movie was and Star Trek are going to pound this movie into the dirt the coming weekend. The fact that 20th Century Fox claimed that they spent 12 days of shooting new material, and reviewers who've seen the leaked print and the new print point out that the only difference was the special effects added, really ticked off the comic fanbase. A lot. And it's a shame since Jackman, Danny Huston, and Liev Schreiber turned into some fantastic performances.

Reagen Sulewski: Tough crowd. I consider this a decent sized win. There was no chance it was going to match X3, and considering all the bad buzz this had gotten due to the piracy issue, as well as the mediocre reviews, they have to be happy that it got into mega blockbuster territory. With a somewhat reasonable-for-this-type-of-film budget of $150 million, it's not like they needed to break records. And I still can't be blase about a film nearly making $90 million in one weekend.

Max Braden: I overestimated my prediction. They were probably hoping for Wolverine to be this year's Iron Man, but $85 million is a good result. The success is if this movie helps extend the brand. Wolverine should do well on DVD and will enable Fox to go ahead with another X-Men Origins movie. I'd bet a significant portion of the audience would want to see a Gambit movie based on Taylor Kitsch's performance.

Tim Briody: I still can't get over the multiplier this pulled in this weekend. I really thought it'd throw something similar to X3, since this was ostensibly the fourth X-Men movie. Instead it behaved like an original franchise. I'm reasonably sure it goes into freefall mode after this weekend since the core fanbase didn't even seem to find the movie redeemable but this is a big, big win.

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