It’s only March, and we’ve already officially headed into the blockbuster season. Last week, audiences were blown away by Logan, the latest Wolverine-centric spinoff in the X-Men universe. That film hit the box office with a bang, taking in over $85 million in its opening weekend, putting it in direct competition with this coming weekend’s opener, Kong: Skull Island.

Kong: Skull Island is the second film set in the MonsterVerse, which is Warner Bros’ and Legendary’s shared universe that consists of movie monsters King Kong and Godzilla. The film has a hefty budget of $185 million, meaning it’ll likely have to make north of $400 million at the box office in order to considered a big success. So what’s the projection for it, especially when taking Logan into consideration?

According to Deadline, Kong is looking to take in $40-$50 million domestically in its opening weekend. However, that seems to be a conservative projection. Considering that last year’s Legend of Tarzan took in $46 million with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 36 percent, we think it’s plausible that Kong: Skull Island can break $50 million with its 81 percent.

So does this push it clear of Logan? Not quite. It’ll actually be quite the race. Logan is getting quite the good word of mouth, and given its momentum, its weekend-to-weekend drop could be relatively small. For example, if Logan drops 45 percent (which is an admirable drop), it’ll land it at around $48 million, making this coming weekend anyone’s game.

RELATED: OUR REVIEW OF KONG: SKULL ISLAND

Of course, where the two films differ greatly is in style and tone. Logan is a hard, dramatic piece, whereas Kong: Skull Island is the very definition of a popcorn film. Yes, the buzz surrounding Logan may be great, but at the end of the day, audiences may be more in the mood for a romp through the jungle than a depressing superhero western.

But my personal question is whether or not Kong can be considered a success with a $50 million opener. Granted, it’s likely to make up for a lot of that at the foreign box office, but if it starts out that low, it seems questionable that it’ll make back enough to justify any further sequels. For comparison, Godzilla made over $90 million in its opening weekend domestically. It was made on a budget of $160 million. It made $529 million worldwide…and it supposedly only made just north of $50 million in profits. Not super encouraging for Kong, if it’s tracking for $50 million on its more than $180 million budget. Then again, once you smash both Kong and Godzilla together on screen, all bets will be off as to how well they’ll do. 

Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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SOURCE: Deadline