Beijing audiences are pouring into theaters despite easy online access to one of the biggest movies of the year. X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaped to the top of the box office with a $87 million opening weekend in the US and grossed 10 million yuan in China on its opening day, May 3, two days after its global premiere.
Beijing audiences are pouring into theaters despite easy online access to one of the biggest movies of the year. X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaped to the top of the box office with a $87 million opening weekend in the US and grossed 10 million yuan in China on its opening day, May 3, two days after its global premiere.
This trend shoots the latest X-Men blockbuster up with the three previous installment in which Hugh Jackman plays mutant superhero Wolverine.
Hunky Hugh and his super friends won first place at the Chinese box office during the recent three-day May Holiday, with total box office takings of 60 million yuan.
"Audiences have a huge appetite for this character. The movie is easily set to cross the 100 million yuan mark," says its Chinese distributor Huaxia Film Distribution Company.
Wolverine explores the evolution of a man who appears to be constantly at war with himself, his brother Victor/Sabertooth (Liev Schreiber), his leader William Stryker (Danny Huston) and his Team X comrades, all of whom are unwilling to let Wolverine/Logan distance himself from his past.
The trilogy's final chapter, X-Men: The Last Stand, had the franchise's best opening with $102.8 million. But Wolverine leapt ahead of the first two movies; X-Men took $54.5 million in its first weekend and X2: X-Men United earned $85.6 million.
Jackman, 40, has come a long way from his days in musical theater in Sydney and as a part-time clown at children's parties. But he still had a lot riding on Wolverine, a film he helped produce. He revealed that he spent an hour-and-a-half every day in training to achieve the buffed body he showcases in the movie, and getting there took a super-mindset.
"I worked out imagining I was Wolverine," he says. "Wolverine to me is the guy who begins when everybody else quits. I think that's why people love him."
The muscular Australian is known as a versatile actor who has starred in a range of movies from action adventures such as Swordfish to romances such as last year's Australia. He has enjoyed a Tony-winning stage career on Broadway and last year's Sexiest Man Alive has been riding high for the past 12 months. In February, he received rave reviews after hosting the Academy Awards. He also immortalized his name in Hollywood history recently by sinking his hand and footprints into cement outside the famous Grauman's Chinese Theater.
X-Men
2000
This marked the first big-budget adaptation of the long-running Marvel Comics series. It introduced a school of skilled mutants called X-Men. The setting is the near future. A dispute breaks out between humans and mutants. One of the mutants, Magneto, believes that this will escalate into all-out war, and the other powerful mutants must use their powers to stop Magneto. Directed by Bryan Singer. Starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry.
X2: X-Men United
2003
This time the mutants are threatened by a human scientist, played by Brian Cox, who wants to wipe them off the face of the earth. As they try to stop him, the X-Men explore their own emotions and relationships, and it is their hurt feelings and identity crises that give the movie some dramatic heft to accompany the expected explosions, high-flying fistfights and not-quite-sublime special effects. Directed by Bryan Singer. Starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry.
X-Men: The Last Stand
2006
This is the third and presumably last film about the powerful Marvel Comics mutants. Once again Halle Berry plays Storm, a weather woman who conjures up meteorological mischief by raising her arms, while Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine, a guy with an enviable immune system and a trigger temper. These good mutants join Xavier, the headmaster at a mutant school whose graduates battle against the bad mutants led by Magneto. Directed by Brett Ratner (Rush Hour).
