KONG: SKULL ISLAND Stomps All Over The Box Office With A Huge $61M Opening; LOGAN Passes $150M Domestic

2017 is really off to a strong start for movies and it looks like we can add another film to the win column as Jordan Vogt-Roberts' well-received Kong: Skull Island opened to $61 million stateside this past weekend, which is about $10-15 million better than its initial projections. Globally, it earned a solid $81.6 million from 65 markets, for a worldwide sum of a little over $142.6 million, which is certainly not a bad start for a film that reportedly cost around $190 million to make and has yet to release in both China & Japan.

Just like Logan & John Wick: Chapter 2 before it, a strong mixture of widespread critical acclaim and an extremely positive word-of-mouth likely helped the film's cause and should bode well for the rest of its box office run, even as everyone braces for the arrival of Disney's Beauty and the Beast next week. 

Speaking of Logan, the Wolverine swan song continued to perform well in its second frame, scoring another good weekend with $37.9 million, a drop of just 57%, which is a pretty healthy decline and also the best hold for any film in the entire X-franchise, meaning James Mangold's masterpiece will almost definitely have legs long into the spring.

The R-rated film, which had a modest production budget of $97 million, has now crossed the $150 million mark at the domestic box office and should pass the original X-Men ($157.3M), X-Men: Apocalypse ($155.4M), and maybe even X-Men Origins: Wolverine ($179.9) by the end of the upcoming week. Globally, it's swiftly approaching the $450 million mark (currently standing at $438.3M), after a strong $70 million showing this past weekend, and will likely pass the worldwide total of X-Men: The Last Stand ($459.4M) in the next few days.

As for where it'll ultimately finish, reaching $600-$700 million worldwide seems like a realistic possibility, especially if it can weather the storm of the next few weeks, which, with little-to-no competition in the R-rated action film department, seems doable. Even if it's unable to reach those heights, Logan really only has to cross Apocalypse's $543.9 million global haul to secure its place as the third highest grossing X-Men film, after Deadpool and X-Men: Days of Future Past, and as the highest grossing Wolverine solo feature ever. 

So, what do you guys think? Did you enjoy the return of King Kong this weekend? Sound off with your thoughts below!

Kong: Skull Island reimagines the origin of the mythic Kong in a compelling, original adventure from director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. In the film, a diverse team of explorers is brought together to venture deep into an uncharted island in the Pacific—as beautiful as it is treacherous—unaware that they’re crossing into the domain of the mythic Kong.