Weekend Box Office: July 26-28

Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1.  The Wolverine - $55 million

2.  The Conjuring - $22.1 million

3.  Despicable Me 2 - $16 million

4.  Turbo - $13.3 million

5.  Grown Ups 2 - $11.5 million

6.  Red 2 - $9.4 million

7.  Pacific Rim - $7.5 million

8.  The Heat - $6.8 million

9.  R.I.P.D. - $5.8 million

10.  Fruitvale Station - $4.6 million

He's the best there is at what he does, but despite being a damn fine movie, The Wolverine underwhelmed stateside this weekend with an estimated $55 million.  That should not come as a surprise, though, with audiences still wary of returning for another Wolverine solo outing after the critically maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and with those trailers not doing too much to convince them that this film was a vast improvement.  Also, asking those same wary moviegoers to shell out the extra cash for 3D showings probably didn't help them this weekend either.

But, like Wolverine's healing factor, the movie will actually recover nicely.  With a reported budget of around $120 million, the sequel has already grossed $141 million worldwide and is scheduled to open in Japan in September.  The audiences who did show up this weekend - particularly the fans - also appeared to really enjoy the film, giving it an "A-" Cinemascore grade, which should hopefully give it some legs at the box office for a little while longer.  Combine that with the excellent X-Men: First Class (which also underwhelmed in its 2011 box office run), they've gone a long way to restore goodwill amongst the fans, which will definitely help when X-Men: Days of Future Past opens next summer.  In the long run, the movie is a success, but it just won't have a great opening weekend to boast about (Origins had a great opening weekend, and look how that turned out).

In the meantime, The Conjuring had an excellent second weekend, especially for a horror movie, dropping only 47% from last weekend to earn $22.1 million.  It now stands at $83 million domestically, and will easily pass the $100 million mark by next weekend.  There's also no stopping Despicable Me 2, which earned $16 million to bring its domestic total to $306 million, and became the sixth animated movie to pass $300 million at the box office. 

The other box office success story of the weekend was Fruitvale Station, which expanded to over 1000 theaters and earned a terrific $4.6 million.

As summer winds down, the offerings are getting slimmer, as next weekend sees the releases of The Smurfs 2, and the crime thriller 2 Guns, starring Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington.