Weekend Preview: Wolverine is Back

This weekend marks the fifth time that Hugh Jackman has donned the adamantium claws to turn his box office foes into mince meat. Also: indie hit The Way, Way Back is set to expand nationwide into 886 theaters, and Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine opens in six theaters.

So obviously The Wolverine is going to take first place this weekend. It has no competition from new nationwide releases, and last weekend's winner The Conjuring should see a sharp second weekend decline despite good reviews. The mutant anti-hero's last outing made $85 million in its opening weekend but didn't make much of a splash critically. Wolverine has always been one of the most popular X-Men characters, so Fox shouldn't have any trouble getting comics fans into the theater. The real question is whether four years is enough time for general audiences to be interested in seeing another standalone film. If general audiences bite, The Wolverine could end up around $70 million for the weekend. If not, I would expect this to become the worst opening X-Men film with around $50 million.

After grossing over $5 million in limited release, Sundance darling The Way, Way Back expands nationwide this weekend. Fox Searchlight has marketed it as "A new comedy from the studio that brought you Little Miss Sunshine and Juno," clearly in the hopes of duplicating their box office successes. However both of those opened to much higher per theater averages in limited release: $52,999 for Sunshine and $59,124 for Juno, while Way Back opened to only $29,094. Sunshine went on to earn $5.6 million in its first weekend in wide release and Juno earned $10.6 million. So $5 million will probably be the upper limit for Way Back this weekend.

Two years ago Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris opened in six theaters to $599,003 on its way to a record high gross for the writer/actor/director ($56.8 million) and an Oscar win for Original Screenplay. After Allen's To Rome with Love fell flat critically and at the box office, he is definitely looking to reverse that trend with Blue Jasmine. If successful, he could score himself a couple more Oscar nominations as well as one for lead actress Cate Blanchett. An opening weekend above half a million will definitely help their chances.

Are you traveling to Japan with Hugh Jackman this weekend or sticking with something a little closer to home?

Tune in next week for another round of ridiculous with The Smurfs 2 and some Denzel Washington/Mark Wahlberg action in 2 Guns.