娱乐英语新闻:New X-Men film tops weekend box office, kicking off summer season

LOS ANGELES, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The latest X-Men film kicked off Hollywood's summer movie season this weekend in North American with an estimated gross of 87 million dollars over the three-day period, preliminary figures showed Sunday.

    "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," released by 20th Century Fox and starring Hugh Jackman, proved that the Australian actor's newly-found appeal has translated to "major summertime superhero bucks," according to movie industry analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

    Dergarabedian is the founder of Los Angeles-based box office tracking firm Media By Numbers, which was purchased by movie industry review website Hollywood.com. This weekend marks the website's first issuance of weekly box office report.

Actor Hugh Jackman holds a sign given to him by Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman at the premiere of the movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" in Tempe, Arizona April 27, 2009.

Jackman plays the title role in the prequel film of the Marvel Comics-based "X-Men" sci-fi thriller trilogy in which he played mutant superhero Wolverine.

    "Wolverine" made the second-best opening of the four X-Men movies after "X-Men: The Last Stand," which opened with more than 102 million dollars over Memorial Day in 2003.

    The new X-men installment's impressive performance came after a working copy of the film was pirated about a month before it opening. Industry analysts estimated the piracy may cost the film as much as 20 million dollars in ticket sales.

    Meanwhile, Warner Bros.' romantic comedy "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" opened in second place, taking in 15.3 million dollars over the weekend in the U.S. and Canada. The release was positioned to take advantage of the portion of moviegoers who has no interest in the comic book or superhero movie, analysts said.

(L-R) Actors Will.i.am, Lynn Collins, Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, Liev Schreiber and Taylor Kitsch arrive at the premiere of the movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" in Tempe, Arizona April 27, 2009

Last week's box office leader, extra-marital affair thriller "Obsessed" slipped to third place with 12.2 million dollars this weekend, for a total of 47 million dollars in its two weeks of release.

    Rounding out the top five movies over the weekend are Warner Bros. fantasy comedy "17 Again" and DreamWorks Animations' Sci-fi comedy "Monsters vs. Aliens," with 6.4 million and 5.8 million dollars respectively.